Academy Of Ideas

Recorded on Sunday 21 October, 2012 For many years, the only hybrid human/animal embryos that could be legally created in the UK were those resulting from fertilising a hamster’s egg with a man’s sperm, as a means of testing male fertility. In 2008, it became legal to create all manner of hybrid human/animal embryos for research purposes, provided that such embryos were destroyed within two weeks of their creation. 2012 saw the establishment of a new £5.8million Centre for Mitochondrial Research at Newcastle University, to develop techniques for preventing the transmission of debilitating mitochondrial disease. But these techniques cannot be tested in clinical trials without a change in the law, and the government has commissioned a ‘public dialogue’ on the issue. Some object that mitochondrial-exchange techniques involve the creation of children with ‘three parents’, while others claim that this objection misunderstands the relevant science. Those involved in such debates