British minister defends embryo research bill

LONDON (Reuters) - The British government is right to push through hybrid human-animal embryo legislation after a Roman Catholic cardinal attacked the government for "endorsement of experiments of Frankenstein proportion", Health Minister Ben Bradshaw has told the BBC.

The leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland cardinal Keith O'Brien has called for a proposed new law -- the Human Fertilization and Embryology Bill -- to outlaw the practice and wants the government to allow a free vote on the legislation.

"I think if it was about the things the cardinal referred to, creating babies for spare parts or raiding dead people's tissue then there would be justification for a free vote," Bradshaw told the BBC Radio 4's "Any Questions" on Friday.

"But it's not about those things. He was wrong in fact, and I think rather intemperate and emotive in the way that he criticized this legislation.

"This is about using pre-embryonic cells to do research that has the potential to ease the suffering of millions of people in this country. The Government has taken a view that this is a good thing.

"We have free votes on issues of conscience like abortion, like the death penalty, where the government does not take a view.

"I think in this case the Government's absolutely right to try to push this through to the potential benefit of many people in this country."

Supporters of hybrid research say it will give scientists the large number of embryos they need to make stem cells to help find cures for a range of diseases.

Researchers create inter-species hybrids by injecting human DNA into a hollowed-out animal egg cell. The resulting embryo is 99.9 percent human and 0.1 percent animal.