Hybrid Embryos: A Waste Of Money

You don't have to take my word for it:

The creation of human–animal hybrid embryos — proposed as a way to generate embryonic stem cells without relying on scarce human eggs — has met with legislative hurdles and public outcry. But a paper published this week suggests that the approach has another, more fundamental problem: it may simply not work.

Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology, a stem-cell company based in Los Angeles, California, and his colleagues show that in their labs, early-stage human–cow, human–mouse and human–rabbit hybrid embryos fail to grow beyond 16 cells (Y. Chung et al. Cloning Stem Cells doi:10.1089/clo.2009.0004; 2009). The hybrid embryos also failed to properly express genes thought to be critical for pluripotency — the ability to develop into a wide variety of cell types.

Adult stem cell research and cord blood stem cell research work. But they do not offend the Catholic Church. So they are so starved of funding that those who pursue them have to take refuge in, of all places, the French Republic.