After two years, has experimenting on human life lost its power to disgust?

Harvard University cloning expert Douglas Melton said: "I'm glad to see it published, as it will encourage others to try it."

Even American bioethics expert R. Alta Charo, of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said she couldn't see any harm, provided the embryos were not implanted in a woman's body.

Thankfully, the creation of hybrid species has been banned in Australia. But this doesn't mean that Sheng's work - if it proves successful - won't have an impact here.

Researchers could try to import cut-rate Chinese human-rabbit stem cell lines - they might fit into tight research budgets more easily than 100 per cent human lines.

Furthermore, we could expect an intense and angry campaign to reverse the ban on hybrids in order to make those miracle cures possible. Ethics? Well, look, hybrids have received the full endorsement of the Shanghai Municipal Council - what more could you want?

Am I drawing a long bow?

I would have thought so - until last week's announcement. Then I realised that experimenting on human life at its most vulnerable has lost its power to shock and disgust.

Not even two years ago, a tiny American biotech company, Advanced Cell Technology, set alarm bells ringing around the world when it claimed it had cloned a handful of human embryos. The ensuing controversy made front-page news, with abundant chatter about "standing on the threshold of a brave new world".

Then there was the passionate, wordy and exhausting debate in Federal Parliament over research on frozen IVF embryos.

That ended in victory for the researchers - a victory not only in Parliament but in the minds of the media, the scientific community and the public.

It has taken less than two years to habituate ourselves to regarding human embryos as pharmaceutical fodder.

Now we've reached the point where scientists play at the ghastly fantasies of The Island of Dr Moreau and no one blinks.

So don't be surprised if you read that Dr Huizhen Sheng has been trundled before an Australian parliamentary committee to argue the case for hybrid humans.

If, of course, the local media bothers to cover her speech.