Aggregated News
A fertility watchdog is set to approve the use of human-animal embryos for research.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority will recommend that the use of the hybrid embryos - where human DNA is put into egg cells removed from dead cows - should go ahead for research purposes.
Researchers applying for permission to carry out the experiments say the embryos would never be allowed to develop into living creatures.
Instead they would be used to create stem cells that could unlock the secrets of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.
Although the HFEA is expected to back the controversial research in principle, it has come under pressure from religious groups to make the experiments illegal.
Two teams from British universities have applied to the HFEA for permission to create hybrids.
Dr Steven Minger, of King's College London, who heads one of the two teams, accepts that there is a "yuck factor" to the proposed work - but says the embryos would be human.
The only remaining fragments of "cowness" would exist in machinery called mitochondria that provide the energy for the...