Proposals for cow-human embryos put on hold

British plans to create cloned human embryos that contain small amounts of cow DNA have been set back by about a year, after regulators decided to gauge public opinion before granting any licences. Scientists want to use cow eggs to create and study cloned embryos because human eggs are in desperately short supply. Injecting human DNA into animal eggs, creating a 'chimaera' mix of species, gets around this problem. The work could lead to new treatments for conditions such as Parkinson's disease, and the idea of creating chimaeras for research purposes is relatively uncontroversial among scientists. Researchers elsewhere, such as China, have done work with chimaeric embryos before. The British government said last December that it was considering banning such experiments, prompting concern among researchers at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and Kings College London, UK. The two universities submitted an application for a licence to do such work last year. Such a ban would be a set-back for the UK scientific community, which is currently quite strong in the field of cloning research. But at the same time, the UK's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), the independent body that licenses embryo research, decided to look at the issue. Today, it said that it will consider the applications, but only after a three-month public consultation... Whole article: "http://www.nature.com":[ http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070108/full/070108-11.html]

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