A "Monstrous Act Directed Against Human Dignity"

The headline quotes the Vatican's statement against the provisional approval of the creation of human-animal chimeric embryos by Britain's Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority. Human eggs are hard to come by, so researchers want to put human nuclear DNA into the eggs of cows and rabbits to create embryos for medical research. The nuclear DNA would be removed from the animal eggs leaving chiefly the animal DNA (about 13 genes) found in their energy producing mitochondria. Researchers would then inject the enucleated animal eggs with nuclei taken from human cells and hope that they would grow into blastocysts from which embryonic stem cells could be derived.

The Vatican's statement brings up the question: If the presence of 13 animal genes is not enough to block the installation of a human soul, how many would be?

Senator Sam Brownback's (R-Kan.) Human Chimera Prohibition Act discussed here.

Some of my earlier thoughts about embryonic souls here.