The creation of embryos that are part-human and part-animal should be approved by the Government’s fertility watchdog on Wednesday, after a consultation revealed strong scientific support for the work and only limited public concern.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) is expected to agree in principle that scientists can use interspecies embryos that are 99.9 per cent genetically human to investigate diseases such as Parkinson’s and diabetes.

A decision to allow cytoplasmic hybrid or “cybrid” embryos, formed by placing human DNA into an empty animal egg, is anticipated after the four-month consultation found that most opposition to the experiments comes from people who object to all embryo research.

The wider public, by contrast, was broadly supportive: a poll found that 61 per cent agreed with such work if it might improve understanding of diseases. Scientists also backed the research overwhelmingly.

A positive ruling would clear the way for the authority to consider licence applications from research teams at King’s College, London and the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, who want to produce cybrids to create stem cell models of disease.

The HFEA, however, is likely to defer settling the acceptability of other sorts of interspecies embryos — chimeras in which human and animal cells are mixed, and true hybrids in which human sperm is used to fertilise animal eggs or vice-versa.

The consultation, published today, found “insuffient information on the desirability of creating these entitites”, and no British scientists are presently proposing work of this sort.

The results of the consultation come as scientists await the Government’s latest plans for new legislation on interspecies embryos.

Ministers have already backed down from a proposal to ban them altogether after pressure from scientists, and the draft Human Tissues and Embryos Bill to be included in the Queen’s Speech currently exempts cybrids and chimeras while outlawing true hybrids.

This, however, was condemned as excessive in July by a scrutiny committee of MPs and peers, which recommended allowing all such research subject to licensing by the HFEA.

Scientists are keen to use cybrids as a source of cloned human embryonic stem cells for studying disease. DNA from a patient with a condition such as motor neuron disease or Alzheimer’s would be inserted into the shell of a cow egg from which the nucleus has been removed.

The embryo would be 99.9 per cent human, and would carry genetic errors implicated in the disease in question. It would then be split up to create stem cells, for studying the condition’s progress and testing new drugs.

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