By Liz Townsend

Days after a British research team announced the creation of a human-cow hybrid embryo, pro-life groups have filed a legal challenge questioning the government’s right to license such controversial research.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) granted a license in January to Newcastle University scientists allowing them to create human-animal hybrids. The researchers announced April 1 that they had “produced the embryos by inserting human DNA from a skin cell into a hollowed-out cow egg,” according to The Guardian. “An electric shock then induced the hybrid embryo to grow. The embryo, 99.9% human and 0.1% other animal, grew for three days, until it had 32 cells.”

The scientists said they plan to grow more of the hybrid embryos for no more than six days, and then kill them to harvest their stem cells, The Guardian reported.

Many in Britain are strongly opposed to such research. “The creation of human-animal hybrid embryos represents a disastrous setback for human dignity in Britain,” Anthony Ozimic, political secretary for the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, said in a press release. “The deliberate blurring of the boundaries between humans and other species is wrong and strikes at the heart of what makes us human. It is creating a category of beings regarded as sub-human who can be used as raw material to benefit other members of the human family, effectively creating a new class of slaves.”

The organizations Comment on Reproductive Ethics (CORE) and Christian Legal Centre filed the judicial review of the licenses. They contend that current law only allows the HFEA to grant licenses for the creation of human embryos, not hybrids. Proposals to update the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill are currently being debated in Parliament, according to The Telegraph.

“From day one of the proposals to create animal-human cloned embryos, CORE has always argued that they are prohibited under the current law, are neither necessary nor desirable, and that the science itself is nonsensical; unlikely to work and unlikely to provide any useful information for anybody, let alone any therapies,” the group said in a press release. “These licences should not have been granted.”

The Newcastle University team’s research has not yet been published or peer-reviewed, so reports of its “success” are preliminary. The team said they plan to present the results for publication within a few months, The Guardian reported.

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