Hybrid Hype

This excellent letter appeared in yesterday's Daily Telegraph:

Sir - We were interested by Roger Highfield's article "Hybrids: separating hope from the hype" (Features, April 8), describing how the vast majority of people have been misled by frequent assertions that the inter-species embryos announced last week are "99.9 per cent human".

Perhaps the Government could tell us what percentage of the full hybrids (created with human eggs and non-human sperm, or vice versa), also proposed by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, are human and whether it is honest to describe them as "human-admixed" embryos. It would also be very interesting to know what purposes these full hybrid embryos are meant to serve.

Concerning contested licences, perhaps rather than irresponsibly pushing the boundaries of the 1990 Act, the HFEA might have more regard for patient safety, since new figures (from the report by the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology) show that Britain has the worst safety records for fertility treatment in Europe.

Jim Dobbin MP (Lab), David Burrowes MP (Con)