President

Other NBC members 73 instead have reached the following conclusions:
There is no doubt that the problems discussed in the Document –
overcoming of the barriers between species, creation of new entities mixing
human and animal genetic material in a laboratory – have an enormous
relevance and call for great caution in the evaluation and control of these new
powers of intervention. However, for those who don’t accept the “slippery slope”
argument (especially in the catastrophist form described above), because they
believe that the responsibility principle requires, today more than ever, the
recognition of differences, which change things, and do not agree with the
ethical thesis of the absolute protection due to the human embryo in the very
first stages of development (even when founded on the topic of the uncertainty
of identity), the condemnation of the creation of cybrids cannot be shared. We
believe, in fact, that the empirical observation that cybrids are not destined to
develop makes a difference and that a transparent and rigorous control of this
type of experiments – if conducted for cognitive purposes and if they can
reproduced in different laboratories – is, even from the bioethical point of view,
more acceptable than their a priori condemnation founded on an excessively
strict application of the precaution principle.
73 C. Flamigni, S. Garattini, D. Neri, A. Piazza, M. Toraldo di Francia, G. Zuffa.
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