Mary Shelley’s Dr Frankenstein made much more than a mere monster – he also inspired an enduring mistrust in the public’s attitudes towards research in human genetics and embryology.

Stem cell research has reopened the ethical debate about the status of human embryos. It is hard to understand those who entertain the notion that the fertilised egg is a human being: until an embryo is around 12 days in development it is impossible even to tell whether it will potentially grow into one person or twins. Nearly a third of fertilised eggs fail to develop in the mother because of common abnormalities, and no one contends that this represents human death.

When in vitro fertilisation, IVF, was invented there was much critical ethical response concerning the loss of fertilised eggs, yet it has now become widely accepted. It remains a puzzle to me that President Bush is against the isolation of embryonic stem cells from human embryos on the basis that it leads to death of embryos while IVF, which also leads to death of embryos, is widely practised in the United States.

It is a real pleasure to observe a new maturity in the response of the British public to this week’s news that hybrid human-animal embryos are to be permitted for research. They would be made by implanting the nucleus of a human cell into an animal egg whose nucleus has been removed.

The fact that 61 per cent of those polled responded positively to the prospect does, I hope, indicate that the potential benefits of genetic science are starting to loom larger in the public imagination that the lurching silhouette of Frankenstein’s monster.

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