The Christian Legal Centre (CLC) has gone to the High Court in a bid to halt research by two universities using animal-human hybrids.

The CLC yesterday filed papers at the High Court seeking Judicial Review over the recent decisions by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to grant licences for research into degenerative diseases using animal-human hybrids.

The decision comes after Newcastle University last week claimed to have created the first animal-human embryo and the HFEA this week licensed King's College London to conduct similar research.

The legal challenge has been filed on the grounds that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 does not allow licensing of animal-human hybrid embryos but rather contains a prohibition on the creation of such embryos. The CLC believes, therefore, that no licence can be granted by the HFEA and that the HFEA acted beyond its powers.

The CLC added that even if the HFEA did have the power to grant a licence, the HFE Act 1990 provides that no licence can be granted unless it appears to the HFEA that the licence for research is necessary or desirable, or that the HFEA is satisfied that any proposed use of embryos is necessary for the purposes of the research.

Andrea Minichiello Williams is barrister and Director of the Christian Legal Centre, which is bringing the action together with Comment on Reproductive Ethics.

She said that the HFEA had "acted unlawfully" in granting licences permitting the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos, and argued that at the time the 1990 HFE Act was passed, Parliament had envisaged the embryo as human and not 'animal-human'.

"The decisions to grant the licences were not justified in law in that the proposed scientific techniques have been rendered 'unnecessary' and 'undesirable' by new technical advances; the proposed techniques do not work and raise new scientific problems that will prevent any meaningful research work," she said.

"Most importantly, the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos is the subject matter of a Bill before Parliament and the ethics, utility and limits of such embryo research is presently the subject of parliamentary debate. The HFEA has pre-empted and usurped the will of Parliament."

Mrs Williams chided the HFEA for failing to take into account bio-safety issues and the impact of animal egg factors on the human genome, adding that current scientific evidence indicates that research using animal-human embryos "will not yield satisfactory results".

"The creation of animal-human hybrids is an attack on the innate dignity of what it means to be human," she said.

The Christian Legal Centre is asking the Court to revoke the licenses granted by the HFEA to Newcastle University and King's College London and order that no further experimentation is carried out.

Mrs Williams added: "It is also necessary for the Court to comment on the fact that the 1990 Act said licences can only be granted when deemed necessary or desirable. This is a legal and proper standard designed to safeguard and protect the embryo.

"When other alternatives to such controversial research already exist, then it cannot be claimed that such new research is either necessary or desirable."