The debate over the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, currently going through Parliament, has focussed attention on the Christian response to the legislation. The Catholic Church in particular has been vociferous in its opposition. Rebecca Paveley asked Michael Wenham, a vicar in the diocese who is suffering from Motor Neurone Disease - one of the diseases to which scientists hope they may find a cure through the research - to set out his views on the Bill. He is joined by the former Bishop of Oxford, Richard Harries, a member of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, who explains why he backs the scientists.
Richard Harries
Louise Brown is now about 30. After this first child conceived using In Vitro Fertilization was born the government set up a commission chaired by Mary, now Baroness, Warnock to regulate this whole area. Their recommendation was that the early embryo should be accorded a degree of respect and given a legal protection which reflects this. It is this fundamental principle which underlies all the law on the subject. In short, the early embryo does not have the rights of an adult or baby. On the other hand, as a potential child, it is not just tissue. The 1990 legislation which enshrined this position has proved remarkably robust. It was supplemented by the 2001/2 regulations which allows research using embryos not just for purposes of improving fertility, but for serious diseases as well. These pieces of legislation have enabled the Human Fertilisation and Embryo Authority to regulate all the fertility clinics in the country, both private and NHS, as well as all research involving embryos. Nevertheless, there have since been some highly significant scientific advances, and changes in social mores, for example the advent of civil partnerships. The Act needed to be updated.
The Roman Catholic position, which is shared by many Evangelicals and some Anglicans, is that ‘Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception.’ The implications of this view must be fully faced. It means ruling out IVF altogether, for this treatment involves taking a number of eggs from the woman, fertilizing them and implanting in the womb the two which are most likely to survive and flourish. Those which are not frozen for further use, either because the first treatment failed, or to produce siblings, are destroyed. The implication of the RC view is very serious for the large number of women who now need fertility treatment. There is also another implication of the Catholic position. It rules out using Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis. This involves taking some cells from the dividing embryo and testing them for certain inherited diseases. This means that a healthy rather than diseased embryo can be implanted in the womb. It enables children to be born without crippling, death dealing diseases like Cystic Fibrosis. Do we really want pregnant mothers either to seek an abortion later, or bear a child who is subject to great suffering when they have a real choice to bring into being a healthy one?
Like those who produced the excellent reports for the Church of England’s old Board for Social Responsibility I take a gradualist approach towards the moral status of the early embryo and developing foetus. One reason is that this gradualist approach is reflected in the main tradition of the Western Church from the fourth to the nineteenth centuries. Abortion has always been regarded as a serious sin, but for 1500 years the Church made a distinction in the penalties depending on whether it was an early or late abortion. It was only in 1869 that Pope Pius rejected that distinction.
A second consideration is what happens at about 14 days after fertilization. At this point a dark line can be identified in the developing embryo, which is the beginning of the nervous system. After this point we have a single human individual. Before this we have a tiny bundle of multiplying cells, the majority of which go to form the placenta and umbilical cord and which may result in two or more embryos being implanted in the womb. This seems a significant moral, as well as scientific, boundary. It is this primitive streak which is enshrined in law in relation to the 14 day limit on what can be done to the embryo.
Another important factor for me is that we now know that more than two thirds of fertilized eggs are lost anyway in natural conceptions. Nature is prodigal. God has given us brains and skills to interact with natural processes in order to hone what nature does to enhance human health and wellbeing.
There are of course other controversial aspects of the new legislation, the need for supportive parenting rather than the need for a father; hybrids and the technique of PGD with tissue typing to produce a child whose tissue could be used to provide cells for a sick sibling. Space precludes detailed discussion here, but I believe that any initial hesitation, when thought through, can be overcome. But the Bishop’s Bench raised a fair point. Would not the so called ‘saviour siblings’ create an instrumental approach to human life generally which would be thoroughly dangerous? Would it not encourage us to use others as a means to an end? Before 14 days the early embryo is not, in my view, a human individual, and therefore what we do at this stage is not instrumentalising human beings. But perhaps we are on a slippery slope, so that we are influenced to treat the later foetus in an instrumental way? If we fear a slippery slope, then we need something firm to hang onto. We have this in the form of the 14 day rule. All embryos that have been used in research have to be destroyed before that. And we have the firm legal rule that no embryo that has been so used can be implanted in a woman’s womb. So whilst we must continue to watch developments carefully, and science is advancing all the time, I believe we have enough in place to ensure that we do not cross important moral boundaries.
Richard Harries (Lord Harries of Pentregarth) is a member of the Human Fertility and Embryology Authority and chairs their Ethics and Law Advisory Group. A version of this article first appeared in the Church Times (www.churchtimes.co.uk)
Michael Wenham
A hard question
On 1 April this year, scientists from Newcastle University, the home of Dolly the cloned sheep, announced that they had produced a hybrid ‘animal-human’ embryo. But this was no April Fool’s joke. For people with a terminal illness, it spelled the promise of accelerated progress in finding a cure. For people who believe that creating life is God’s prerogative, it presented a problem. So what is it: promise or problem? Whatever the answer, it’s a matter of life and death.
Little did I think what I was letting myself in for, when I agreed to the editor’s request for an article on embryo stem-cell research which is such a hot topic at the moment, with the Human Fertilization on Embryology Bill to be debated in Parliament this month. However, she’d done a very nice piece about my having MND a few months ago, and I owed her one!
Moreover I thought I had it basically sorted out: ‘To my untutored ear, the very idea of such (animal/human) hybrids sounds bizarre and creating even the very first seeds of life with intention of destroying them seems perverse,’ I had written last year in my forthcoming book ‘My Donkeybody’ (to be published by Monarch in October 2008). Simple!
Many hours and many thousands of words of print later, I’m not so sure! I am not a scientist; neither am I an ethicist. So, this is going to be just the view of a Christian struggling with illness and with my faith. My only qualification is that I’m an interested party!
The bill before Parliament is, as its title suggests, something of a catch-all measure. The official listing summarises it: ‘The Bill provides revised and updated legislation for assisted reproduction and changes to the regulation and licensing of the use of embryos in research and therapy’, and adds, ‘Amendments to abortion law are likely to be introduced during the passage of this Bill.’
Among the issues addressed are human embryo research, therapeutic cloning, admixed embryos, saviour siblings, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, fatherless babies and more.
Of these, probably the one to have hit the headlines most is the animal/human hybrid embryo, with its ‘Frankenstein’ tag. It certainly sounds monstrous, but as scientists point out its end-point isn’t a cow’s head on a human body. A human nucleus is transplanted into a hollowed out animal egg, resulting in ‘99.9 per cent’ human DNA in an embryo from which stem cells can be extracted for research. There’s a 14 day time limit on the life-span of such an embryo and a ban on implanting one into a human or animal womb.
Hopes for stem cell research
Stem cell research is the main hope for understanding and treating the ‘lost causes of modern medicine’ (Dr Willy Lensch), diseases such as Huntington’s, Alzheimer’s, Type 1 Diabetes, Parkinson’s, Muscular Dystrophy, Motor Neurone Disease, MS and many more. There’s hope, for example, of a treatment for dry macular degeneration. Curing such diseases is the holy grail quest of medical research. That may well be the reason why scientists are so passionate to keep every route open to discovering it.
‘Future research into MND will rely upon the technology developed to create human-animal embryos, as a source of stem cells.’ When the draft of the Bill was approved by a Parliamentary committee last summer, the MND Association’s research manager, Dr Belinda Cupid was delighted. ‘We hope that progress in this area will not be further delayed and that MND researchers can now work towards the Association’s vision of a world free of MND.’
Her job is to advocate the interests of those facing a frightening condition. Hers is a typical voice among the scientific community and the patients’ groups, and it is a voice of care. A more unexpected defender of the Bill is Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, chief executive of the Medical Research Council, described in The Times as ‘the senior Roman Catholic scientist in Britain’. ‘His conscience told him it was right to support research that promised therapies for such devastating diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, and thus to ease human suffering’ (Times, 29 March 2008). Make no mistake about it, the motivation of the researchers includes genuine compassion.
Reservations and opposition
So why do Christians and members of other faiths often oppose it so vigorously? Was Cardinal O’Brien right in his Easter sermon, when he said, ‘It is difficult to imagine a single piece of legislation which, more comprehensively, attacks the sanctity and dignity of human life than this particular Bill’? From the evangelical wing, the Christian Legal Centre agrees, ‘The creation of animal-human hybrids is an attack on the innate dignity of what it means to be human.’ Although the C of E’s Mission and Public Affairs Council cautiously accepts hybrid embryos for research (CofE website), bishops such as Lichfield, ‘Embryos are potential human beings’, and Durham, who sees it as emerging from a 1984-style atheist utopianism, are less equivocal. ‘The irony is that this secular utopianism is based on a belief in an unstoppable human ability to make a better world, while at the same time it believes that we have the right to kill unborn children and surplus old people, and to play games with the humanity of those in between’ (Tom Wright).
Some core issues
Archbishop Sentamu said of the proposed removal of a child’s need for a father (eg for a lesbian couple or a single mother), ‘There is an unpleasant seam of rampant individualism at the heart of this bill, rooted in a consumerist mentality, where the science that allows something to happen is transformed into the right to have it.’ And that, it seems to me, is one of the underlying tenets of the proponents: ‘If we can, let’s do it.’ Believers are right to question that tenet.
I think we are also right to question the status of embryos. Are they just a collection of cells on a dish? Or are they human life in embryo? I can’t help thinking that our society wants to have it both ways. One missed period brings hope when a baby has been longed for. Perhaps two or three weeks old, there’s joy because the mother is ‘with child’. But if the baby’s not wanted, another 20 weeks can go by before it has a right to life. What doublethink!
We need to face the hard fact that belief in the real God is radical and counter-cultural. We do not take account only of utilitarian considerations: what benefit or harm can I measure from this action? We have to go back and ask what are the principles which God has put into his creation, not only physical, but also moral. Here we don’t have common ground with atheists, but if we’re right about God and discern the principles correctly we can be sure that following them will be the greatest good.
A hopeful answer
There are signs that creating embryos for research may not be the only (or even the best) way. Scientists understandably want to keep all possible options open, as there is no certainty in any technique. However there is a route which doesn’t have the moral ambiguities of others, creating stem cells from skin of patients. These induced pluripotent stem (IPS) cells can apparently transform into any of the body’s cells. It was reported that Professor Ian Wilmut, the scientist who created Dolly the sheep, had decided to abandon therapeutic cloning in favour of this new technique. Personally, I hope that this will prove to be the road to cures for many diseases like mine. I find, after all, that I come to the same conclusion as I had before. It is an irony that in our anxiety to prolong our lives we hold life itself cheap. This contradiction makes for a precarious endeavour. We may see a world free of ‘the lost cause’ diseases. I believe we shall. But we will never make a world free of death. What matters even more is that we place an infinite value on human life. We cannot afford to abuse that life, especially when it is most vulnerable. ‘The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.’
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