Among the kinds of experiments that the report states "should be permissible, subject to additional specialist scrutiny by the national expert body" are:
"Experiments that could be expected to significantly alter the appearance or behaviour of animals, affecting those characteristics that are perceived to contribute most to distinguishing our species from our close evolutionary relatives."It should be noted that the writers of this report, do not say that the third category of experiments should never be performed. The phrase is "should not, for now" be licensed. They say this because at the present time there is a"lack of compelling scientific justification..." They recommend that this list of experiments be kept "under regular review." But in a footnote they realize that,
...whether or not an admixed embryo is predominantly 'human' is an expert judgment, including an assessment of likely phenotype, but neither the precise eventual composition of an individual embryo nor the phenotypic effect of the admixture will be easily predictable in the current state of knowledge. [italics are ours]Read the full fascinating article here - and Bookmark the link while you're there!!
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