News that British regulators have decided in principle to allow the creation of hybrid human-animal embryos for research has provoked horror in the Vatican and among Catholics in Italy.
The first reaction from the Vatican came from Monsignor Elio Sgreccia, head of the Pontifical Academy for Life, who called the decision "a monstrous act against human dignity".
"The scientific community must mobilise immediately," he said in an interview with Vatican Radio. "We believe the British government has ceded to a request from a group of scientists which is certainly immoral"
Britain's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has given provisional approval to a specific kind of inter-species hybrid, created by injecting human DNA into a hollowed-out animal egg cell.
The resulting embryo would be 99.9 percent human and 0.1 percent animal.
The HFEA is believed to be the first regulator in the world to approve this type of human-animal embryos, which are known as a 'cytoplasmic hybrid' embryos, or 'cybrids'.
Avvenire, the daily newspaper owned by the Italian bishops, also lambasted the HFEA's decision by in a front-page editorial on Thursday.
"Can the human be reduced to a percentage? And can a creature of this type still be defined human?" it asked, describing the ethical questions posed by the development as "often unresolvable".
The newspaper also drew attention to doubts over which authorities could give a green light in these cases, those dealing with animal experiments or those focusing on human embryo research.
"If it is decided that decision-making power should go to the authority on human fertilisation, we will know that to call yourself a man in Great Britain only the majority of your genetic heritage needs to be human".
Meanwhile, as Italian politicians gave highly contrasting views of the matter, experts noted that under Italy's 2003 laws on embryo research similar experiments to those envisaged in Britain were possible.
Technically, the embryos green-lighted in the UK are not the same as the classic hybrid ones banned by Italian rules, according to Carlo Alberto Redi, scientific director at the San Matteo research hospital in Pavia, and Amedieo Santosuosso, a Milan appeals court judge.
The key point, they explained, is that with cybrids animal and human genetic material never becomes mixed in the sphere of cells which eventually becomes the embryo.
Nevertheless, some countries, such as Australia, have banned cybrids.
The British researchers hope to use the hybrid embryos, which must be destroyed after 14 days, to create stem cells that might provide new medical treatments for illnesses such as Parkinson's, Motor Neurone Disease and Alzheimer's.
