"The second issue centers on the human-animal boundary and which entities should be regulated as human embryos and which should be regulated under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act of 1986," the committee's report explained. "We have received a lot of evidence suggesting there is no principle, as such, which underpins the government's choice of 50 percent as a cut-off point for whether an entity is sufficiently human to merit regulation by the (Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority), or whether it is more appropriately regulated as an animal by the Home Office."
Then, there was a not-so-subtle hint that it might matter which 50 percent is animal and which is human. Nonetheless, such technicalities could not be allowed to stand in the way of progress.
"For example," said the report, "Professor Martin Bobrow, chair of the Academy of Medical Sciences working party on interspecies embryos, told us that what makes an entity human rather than animal is not easily measured in DNA terms, although, if a line in the sand had to be drawn, he saw no reason why it should not be drawn at 50 percent."
OK. But, the committee wondered, should the 50 percent be "measured by the mass or the number of genes"?
"You may start off with an embryo which is 20 percent human and end up with something which is 60 percent human or vice versa," Dr. Robin Lovell-Badge, a leading British stem cell researcher told the committee.
That did it. The committee completely chucked the percentage approach to humanity.
"We can see no clear reason why certain categories of inter-species embryo should be permitted under license and 'true' hybrids proscribed," it said. Accordingly, it re-crafted the "catch-all" rule, defining as an interspecies any embryo that has some human chromosomes as well as some animal chromosomes.
It then decided to treat all embryos like animals, recommending that researchers be permitted to create them and do what they will with them -- as long as they uniformly kill them by 14 days.
Those who worship science as a god have long been trying to prove that man evolved accidentally from a brute beast. Having thus far failed to produce definitive evidence of this, they are now hoping to prove they can reverse the process.