We Have Created Human-Animal Embryos Says British Team – Dr. Paul J. Dean
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article3663033.ece

Embryos containing human and animal material have been created in Britain for the first time, a month before the House of Commons votes on new laws to regulate the research. A team at Newcastle University announced yesterday that it had successfully generated “admixed embryos” by adding human DNA to empty cow eggs in the first experiment of its kind in Britain.

Commentary

The brave new world in which we find ourselves medically and ethically keeps getting newer and braver. In the midst of debate concerning embryonic stem cell research and other advances like cloning, along with the attendant moral implications, emerges the drive to create admixed embryos, or cytoplasmic hybrids, or cybrids. The genetic material in the resulting embryos is 99.9 per cent human. No doubt questions will be raised as the push continues as to just what to do with cybrids. Are we talking about the use of stem cells only? Will scientists lobby for more? What will be potential sources for the extraction of human DNA? Do we have a being that is 99.9 per cent created in the image of God?

Christians must involve themselves in research and dialogue with the scientific community as ethical boundaries continue to be crossed. Evangelical leaders are woefully ignorant in regard to boundaries that are now routinely crossed even by their own congregants. How can we expect the rank and file to understand certain issue in this arena when their leaders don’t? How many Christians question the biblical propriety of surrogate motherhood for example? Not only is a third party introduced into the marriage relationship that is supposed to be one flesh, but an entire new industry has been spawned with wombs for rent. Surrogacy is now Wall Street big business. How many Christians unknowingly or uncaringly add to the problem with the process of in vitro fertilization? Multiple human embryos (human beings) are discarded or destroyed.

Just because we can do something does not mean that we should do something. To borrow a saying from a friend, “we’re going to have to get our heads around this.”