Let’s put this under the heading of the dawning of the Aquarian age and a new breed of humanity.

Human-animal hybrids have the right to life, according to the Roman Catholic Church. Not many people had heard of human-animal hybrids, also called “chimeras,” before Bush discussed them in his State of the Union which drew riotous ridicule, but evidently a bill introduced in Britain gives scientists the right to create these hybrids for research purposes as long as they destroy the embryos within two weeks.

Catholic bishops of England and Wales, in a submission to the Parliamentary joint committee scrutinising the draft legislation, said that the genetic mothers of “chimeras” should be able to raise them as their own children if they wished.

The bishops said that they did not see why these “interspecies” embryos should be treated any differently than others.

The wide-ranging draft Human Tissue and Embryo Bill, which aims to overhaul the laws on fertility treatment, will include sections on test tube babies, embryo research and abortion. Ministers say that the creation of animal-human embryos – created by injecting animal cells or DNA into human embryos or human cells into animal eggs – will be heavily regulated.

They insist that it will be against the law to implant “chimeras” – named after the mythical creature that was half man and half animal – into a woman’s womb.

The bishops, who believe that life begins at conception, said that they opposed the creation of any embryo solely for research, but they were also anxious to limit the destruction of such life once it had been brought into existence.

In their submission to the committee, they said: “At the very least, embryos with a preponderance of human genes should be assumed to be embryonic human beings, and should be treated accordingly.

The last time the Aquarian Age occurred, around 28,000 BC, seems to coincide with the end of the Neanderthal-type human and the beginnings of modern man (homo erectus). Perhaps as we head into the Aquarian age this time we will see an entirely new species of human evolve. I had thought that this would take the form of a more evolved being rather than a human-animal hybrid, but life is full of surprises.