A biotech company has taken out a Europe-wide patent on a process which campaigners claim would allow 'chimeric' animals to be developed with body parts originating from humans.
An Australian company, Amrad, was granted the patent last year, which covers embryos containing cells both from humans and from 'mice, sheep, pigs, cattle, goats or fish'.
Church groups have already reacted with outrage, denouncing the patent as 'morally offensive'.
Details in the patent do not make it clear what use these mixed-species embryos would be put to, but experts are in no doubt that the potential is there to create a hybrid creature.
Dr Sue Mayer, director of Genewatch, said: 'The company is saying that it wants a patent on a process which could produce chimeric animals using cells from a whole range of species including humans. Many people will find the thought abhorrent.'
A spokesman for the Catholic Church said: 'To patent a process where human life is used as a kind of bank to deposit into animals is morally indefensible.'
Dr Donald Bruce, a spokesman for European churches on bioethics, said: 'This patent should never have been passed. If people are talking about using human cells in animals, that is completely unacceptable.'
Last month the European Patent Office claimed it would never grant a patent on mixed-species embryos as they are considered against 'public order and morality'. But this patent, discovered by a researcher in Greenpeace's German office, was taken out in January 1999 and has since been sold to US company Chemicon International.
Thomas Schweiger of Greenpeace called on the European Patent Office to withdraw it. He said: 'The chimeras may be non-human but they may contain human organs, body parts, nerve cells and even human genetic codes. The company does not give concrete medical uses and obviously intended to give the company broad monopoly rights on the process and chimeric creatures.'
Schweiger believes that one possible use might be to grow human organs in animals for transplantation.
According to the patent the chimera-creating process starts by isolating a special hormone, the objective of which is to stimulate the growth of embryonic cells; known as stem cells. These stem cells are the 'master cells' which could in theory be used to produce virtually any type of replacement tissue for a damaged bodyAmrad chief executive John Grace denied his company had ever conducted research in this field and said the patent would not be used to create animals with human cells. He said the process was mainly used to produce genetically engineered mice for research.
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