Life Science Encyclopedia

A hybrid cell line made from hamster oocyte fertilized with human sperm routinely created for mainly two reasons:

• To avoid legal issues with working with pure human embryonic stem cell lines.
• To assess the viability of human sperm for in vitro fertilization.

Somatic cell hybrids between hamster or mouse and man have been used for mapping of various traits at least since the 1970s.

Ethical discussions

Several, primarily Catholic, countries have banned in vitro generation of hybrid cell lines. The ethical issue often raised is the idea that:

• Human embryos get their inherently "human" qualities (soul) at the moment of fertilization - a philosophy adopted to a varying extent by many countries in their legal regulations about ES cell lines.
• Animals lack a soul

The existence of hybrid cell lines would seem to cause a logical conflict for people that hold the two above statements for true.

References

http://www.humboldt.edu/~essays/ballantyne.html

Junca et al. (1983) Evaluation of human sperm fertility by interspecific (human spermatozoa-hamster oocytes) in vitro fertilization. Acta Eur. Fertil. 14, 191-196