What's human? What's animal? And what of the biology in between?

Policymakers, institutions and even language are hopelessly out of step with developments in trans-species science

Single species ... Humam embryonic stem cells. Photograph: Chad A Cowan

Friday's report by the Academy of Medical Sciences on the increasingly fuzzy boundaries between the human and the animal is the latest in a long series of policy reflections on how to keep pace with developments in the biosciences.

It can justly be said that politics and regulation have not dealt well with our newfound capacities for muddying the boundaries between us and other species. And yet the last two decades have witnessed an unprecedented growth in bioscientific techniques that increasingly call into question what it means to be human. Take the human genome project: many of us may have intuitively suspected that we might have more genetically in common with the chimpanzee than even Darwin had envisaged, only then to be told of our cousinly closeness to the fruit fly, maize and the zebra fish.

Read More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/25/human-animal-trans-species-science