The National Institutes of Health soon expects to lift a moratorium on funding for controversial experiments that add human stem cells to animal embryos, creating an organism that is part animal, part human. The agency had decided last September to suspend reviews of new funding applications for this research while the it considered the ethical issues. Now, the agency says it is ready to move forward with some so-called chimera studies as long as they pass a special agency ethics review. Biomedical scientists generally welcomed the proposal, which could open the way to growing human organs in animals or studying human brain disease in monkeys.
