Regulating the Humanized

A UK panel puts forth guidelines for research that use experimental animals harboring human cells and tissues.

Written byBob Grant

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WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, JANET STEPHENS

As more and more labs report advances in creating experimental animals containing human material (ACHM), scientists and bioethicists in the United Kingdom have called upon the British government to consider the ethical ramifications of the potentially useful, but largely unregulated, research. Last week, the UK Academy of Medical Sciences released a government-sponsored report detailing exactly which type of ACHM's should be allowed and which shouldn't. The report outlines three types of ACHM that should be banned: animals that have human egg or sperm cells that could possibly mate to create an animal-human hybrid, non-human primates with enough functioning human neurons to impart human-like behavior, and embryos that develop more than 14 days and contain a mix of human and non-human primate cells.

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Meet the Author

Bob Grant
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From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.
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