Response to calls for a judicial review of the HFEA's decision to license research using human-animal cytoplasmic hybrid embryos

12.00.00am BST (GMT +0100) Tue 8th Apr 2008

In response to calls for a judicial review of the HFEA's decision to license research using human-animal cytoplasmic hybrid embryos, Dr Evan Harris, Liberal Democrat Science spokesman, said:

"This legal challenge should fail because both the science and technology select committee, and the HFEA received clear legal advice that cybrid embryos were human embryos for the purpose of the 1990 Act, as all their chromosomal DNA is human, and that such research was permitted under the Act and the 2001 therapeutic cloning regulations"

"Critical to the unanimous decision of the select committee to recommend that the HFEA issue the licenses was our view that the work was valuable for medical research, that it got round the problem of the shortage of human eggs, and if it wasn't licensable it would be legal and completely unregulated which certainly was never Parliament's intention."