Glowing monkeys threaten to spark ethical storm

A QUINTET of glowing monkeys threatens to engulf scientists in a new storm of controversy over the ethics of animal experiments and genetic engineering.

The five marmosets carry a fluorescent protein gene that causes their skin to glow under ultraviolet light.

Most dramatically, the scientists were able to show that the gene could be inherited by offspring.

The Japanese breakthrough opens up the prospect for the first time of monkeys being used — like mice — as research tools for the study of numerous human diseases.

But it also raises major ethical concerns about the use of primates in animal experiments, and scientists tiptoeing towards a “brave new world” of genetically modified humans.

Dr David King, from the group Human Genetics Alert, said yesterday: “I’m worried that these steps are being taken without any overall public discussion about whether we want to go down that road. We may find ourselves gradually drifting towards the genetic engineering of human beings. It is clear to me that the scientific community wants at the very least to keep that possibility open.

“’Slippery slope’ is a quite inadequate description of the process, because it doesn’t happen passively. People push it forward.”

The research, led by Dr Erika Sasaki, from the Central Institute for Experimental Animals in Kawasaki, Japan, is published today in the leading scientific journal Nature.

Viruses were used to carry the green fluorescent protein (GFP) gene into 91 marmoset embryos.

Five of the embryos eventually developed into offspring delivered by surrogate mothers.

They included a pair of twins named Kei and Kou. The word “keikou” means “fluorescence” in Japanese.

The GFP gene was shown to be active in all of them, causing their skin, hair roots and various other tissues to glow when exposed to ultraviolet light.

It is not the first time scientists have introduced a foreign gene into monkey DNA. But the Japanese researchers went a major step further by successfully producing second generation offspring with the fluorescent protein gene.

Conventional In-Vitro Fertilisation was used to create the first baby using Kou’s sperm. Two more glowing second-generation marmosets were born, one of which was killed by its mother.

Engineering glowing monkeys is only proof in principle of a much more important concept.

If a fluorescent protein gene can be introduced into the monkey genome and passed onto future generations other genes could be too. That opens up a world of possibilities for medical research, such as the generation of specific monkey colonies containing genetic defects that mirror human diseases.

Mice and rats are already used extensively in this way, providing human “models” that can be experimented on in the search for cures and treatments. However monkeys, being much closer in evolutionary terms to humans, would arguably provide more realistic models.

This is especially true for brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, both of which pose serious medical challenges.

At the same time many people are likely to find the routine use of monkeys in medical research far less acceptable than that of rodents.

Altering inherited DNA in monkeys may also be seen as a step too far towards using the same technology to create genetically enhanced “designer” babies.