Chimera, transgenic embryos, "molecular chisel" ... After a first week of debates on societal choices, the Senate plunged into the technicality of the articles of the bioethics bill devoted to research, laying down "red lines".
The chairman of the LR group Bruno Retailleau has stepped up several times to oppose the crossing of two "red lines, intact since bioethical laws exist: the possibility of creating transgenic embryos, and that of creating chimeric embryos" . In a Senate with a right-wing majority, he could count on the support of the Communists, Cécile Cukierman believing that "research cannot do everything with the living by mixing species".
A revolutionary genetic tool under surveillance
The Minister of Research Frédérique Vidal assured that "there is no question" of coming back to the ban on modification of human embryos by the insertion of animal cells. But the Senate removed by 170 votes against 121 article 17 of the bill aimed at clarifying the prohibited, on the grounds that it would authorize the creation of chimeras by insertion of human cells on animal embryos, as well as the genetic modification of embryos for scientific and medical research.
"The use of the CRISPR-CAS9 technique (revolutionary genome modification tool comparable to genetic scissors) will not lead to genetically modified babies in France", wanted to reassure co-rapporteur Olivier Henno (centrist). “Researchers are not sorcerer's apprentices. (...). They are doing their research to improve human health, "he continued, citing the hope of being able to regenerate organs.
Scientists want to reassure in a forum
"It is up to the legislator and not to the researchers to make the law", retorted Bruno Retailleau. "This is a bioethics law and not France's international competitiveness," he continued, while co-rapporteur Bernard Jomier (PS) called for "not to put in a bad position our French research ”.
Ludovine de la Rochère, president of La Manif pour tous, whose activists gathered again Tuesday evening in front of the Luxembourg Palace, was delighted that the senators had "withdrawn from the text the authorization to develop embryos chimeric and transgenic ”. This measure "opens the door to a huge drift, which is transhumanist logic," she said.
In a column published last week in the daily newspaper Le Monde , thirteen stem cell specialists, including Cécile Martinat, president of the French Society for Stem Cell Research, called for an end to “stirring up the spectrum of emergence of a genetically modified humanity ”. They stressed that "under no circumstances" will these genetically modified embryos "be transferred to the uterus for the purpose of procreation".
Easier searches
Not without new debates, the Senate on the other hand gave its approval to a measure eagerly awaited by scientists, which will facilitate research on embryonic stem cells. Article 14 of the text, adopted by 177 votes to 104, differentiates the regime which applies to research on embryonic stem cells and that which governs research on the embryo.
Today, both types of research are subject to a prior authorization regime with the Biomedicine Agency. The bioethics bill provides for the maintenance of this regime for research on the embryo, but establishes for the others a declarative regime. The senators have even gone a little further than the deputies, bringing to 21 days the time allowed for the culture of embryos in vitro, against seven days de facto so far. The government wants to stay there for 14 days. The Senate is due to complete the first reading of the bioethics bill on Wednesday, before a vote on the entire text next Tuesday.
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