When President Bush called, in the State of the Union address, for a ban on "human-animal hybrids" in addition to a ban on cloning, most listeners were baffled.

When President Bush called, in the State of the Union address, for a ban on "human-animal hybrids" in addition to a ban on cloning, most listeners were baffled. Not people who have been following the research. Biotech researchers have been blurring the boundaries between human and animal life for some time now. Some of the research is unobjectionable and even laudable. If hormones helpful to humans can be produced by injecting human cells into animals, then it should be done. To create new types of organisms that are part animal and part human, on the other hand, would be injurious to human dignity (and potentially to human rights). Scientists in Britain and China have tried to create human-rabbit hybrid embryos for research purposes. In America, there have been efforts to patent human-animal hybrids. Other countries, such as Canada, have banned hybrids. We hope Congress will honor the president's request--because if Congress can't ban human-animal hybrids, it's hard to see how the biotech industry could be meaningfully regulated at all.