Good news. The government are going to allow human-animal hybrid embryos in scientific research. Cool! 
The ethics behind this seem pretty simple. If you agree that an embryo is not a 'soul', there does not seem to be any good reason to oppose this treatment. The embryos that would be used in hybrid research are all of six days old, at which point the stem cells are isolated and then have human DNA inserted. At this point, the development process continues for a few days longer in order for cells to divide and specialise in to early stage cells from particular organs.
The reason why cytoplasmic hybrid embro cells are used is simple. Donated eggs are a scarce resource, and, rightly, most donated eggs are used in IVF treatment. Instead, the plan goes something like this: the egg cell is only a 'container' for DNA and mitochondria. We remove the DNA from the source animal (rabbits and cows are the suggested animals) and replace it with DNA from a donated human cell (from an adult), and then let the cell develop for a few days.
At this point, the spectre of 'horrific' human-animal clones is brought up but it is a red herring with no basis in science. It is sourced in an over-active imagination, fuelled by wonderful literature on the subject. The idea that there might be a human-rabbit hybrid created in a bioscience lab is ridiculous, because it would not work! If a male human tries to reproduce with a female rabbit, there is never a pregnancy as a result.
The proposal put forward would require that laboratories obtain a license from the government, and be subject to inspections and there would be criminal punishments for any researcher who did create a human-animal hybrid that goes beyond what is allowed by the government's rules (ie. a human-animal hybrid that became a baby).
There doesn't seem to be any good moral reason to forbid this research. It seems predicated on vitalistic conceptions of human life - ie. that we are somehow completely different from animals. The idea that 'special' human DNA would be mixed with 'lowly' animal egg cells. This has no basis in reality, of course. Humans are animals, and the fact that we can fly to the moon and download pornography from the Internet does not make us sufficiently different from animals to make them 'unclean'.
In the BBC article, this kind of unthinking repugnance at the idea is represented by Josephine Quintavalle, who says:
This is a highly controversial and terrifying proposal, which has little justification in science and even less in ethics. Endorsement by the UK government will elicit horror in Europe and right across the wider world.
This is perhaps one of the most vapid responses I have seen on the subject. A lot of things that are done in the world may 'elicit horror' or be 'terrifying', but the question is not whether that horror is elicited but whether there is reason for that horror. If a wild animal takes a shit in my garden, I may be horrified. But is there good reason for that horror? I would argue 'no' in both cases. The proposal to the government is restrictive enough to prevent abuse - criminal penalties for researchers and a licensing system for research labs. We have not seen abuse of the current law on embryological research, and the folks involved in scientific researchers aren't five-year olds poking at things with sticks.
'Ethics' is always brought in to this debate, but the 'ethics' that people bring in is a very different kind of ethics to the sort that should be engaged in. Ethics should be a reasoned assessment of action in order to see whether it is consistent with other well-reasoned values and ideals. It should be entered in to in the spirit of reasoned analysis, not faith-based macabre horror.
In the case of human/animal hybrid research, we need to see it for what it reallly is - embryos less than a week old being used to potentially understand diseases and develop treatments, not giant minotaurs, unicorns, fairies and mermaids. The former doesn't 'horrify' me, and it shouldn't horrify you either. 'Ethics', in this case, is an unreasoned opposition to something that may potentially be useful.
Whether or not it will be useful has no connection to it's ethical viability - it is an empirical rather than ethical question. It may be that this research serves no purpose at all, in which case, we roll back to where we are now and say "well, that was an interesting experiment - now we know not to bother". That's how science works, but unfortunately, it's not how the ethics of luddite squeamishness works.
