CRIES of horror and disgust greeted several of the experiments showcased at last week’s international conference on reproductive science in Madrid (see “Brave new treatments”). And it has to be said that some of the science is hard to defend.
Take the furore over attempts to create chimeric human embryos in the lab. The stated rationale for the experiments is that injecting genetically defective embryos with healthy cells of a different genetic make-up might prove an effective a treatment for inherited diseases. But many scientists see this as far-fetched; and even if it isn’t, why experiment on human embryos…
