The Baroness O’Cathain and Christian Broadcasting Council | Wed 27 June 07 at 4pm, Committee Room No 4a, House of Lords
‘What is it to be human?’
Draft Human Tissue and Embryos Bill
Dr Andrew Fergusson
Head of Communications, Christian Medical Fellowship
My task is to introduce the breadth of this bill, and then to comment specifically and briefly on the proposals about the human embryo.
The (Draft) Human Tissue and Embryos bill began as an attempt to merge two large existing authorities – the relatively uncontroversial Human Tissue Authority and the much more controversial Human Fertilisation Embryology Authority - into one unified body, RATE (the Regulatory Authority for Tissue and Embryos). Most experts in the field think this single body would be too large and unworkable and indeed this was emphasized by the British Medical Association in the ethics discussion at its annual representative meeting.
But the Bill puts two major areas of controversy directly on the table, and facilitates the arrival of a third. The three threaten Christian standards of individual human dignity, of family relationships, and threaten the loss of even more human lives. This bill truly focuses the question: What is it to be human?
Three threats
1. The embryology matters are controversial in many ways, but debate has focused, and I will focus, on the question of creating human-animal hybrids and chimeras of various kinds.
2. The network of relationships around the child to be created by artificial reproductive technologies is also threatened – specifically, it is proposed that the child’s need for a father be removed. Others will address that.
3. It is agreed by officials in both Houses of Parliament that the scope of the bill means that amendments relating to abortion can be added, to a bill which will always have government time. The passage by the BMA’s annual meeting of a motion intended to support Parliamentary attempts to introduce abortion on demand in the first three months of pregnancy shows one strategy of the pro-choice lobby. Abortion law was last amended in 1990 under the HFE Act.
So, what’s all this about hybrids and chimeras?
CMF File 34 on Chimeras, hybrids and ‘cybrids’ http://www.cmf.org.uk/literature/content.asp?context=article&id=1939
This document will give you all the necessary detail about these complex and confusing matters, so I just want to give a broad brush approach to what this controversy is all about.
1) It’s about the need for a source for stem cells. What are stem cells? They are basic cells which can reproduce indefinitely and have the capacity to develop into a large number of different cell types. They are an exciting hope for medical treatments, and of course provided there are no other ethical concerns, we support that fully.
2) There are two types of stem cells. All stem cells sourced from outside the embryo (eg umbilical cord blood, bone marrow, skin cells etc) are – perhaps unhelpfully – called adult stem cells. There is almost no ethical controversy about those. However, there are also stem cells in the early human embryo – embryonic stem cells. To obtain these for research or treatment means that the embryo in question is destroyed. This certainly is an ethical question.
The media, accidentally or on purpose, tend to conflate the two types. If I did nothing else in this introduction but show the broadcasters here the difference, it would be very worthwhile!
All the clinical therapies in use at the moment – at least 72 clinical benefits – are from adult stem cells. There may be (at most) one current clinical benefit from embryonic stem cells. Proponents argue that embryonic stem cells are new (first isolated in 1998) and they need more time to do the research. However, there are lots of fundamental biological hurdles to be overcome, and little success overcoming these so far. Venture capital is certainly not putting its money into embryonic stem cell research.
3) The aim in all this is for new treatments with individualised genetically compatible tissues, created according to need:
Take a human egg
Remove its nucleus
Replace with nucleus from somatic cell of person in need
Trick the egg into thinking it’s been fertilised
Let this cloned embryo develop
Cannibalise him/her at an early stage for stem cells
Use those to grow the genetically matched tissue needed – there should be no risk of tissue rejection after transplantation
4) However, human eggs are in short supply as obtaining them is uncomfortable and significantly risky. That leads us to the application to the HFEA by two UK clinics to use cow or rabbit ova as a source of eggs for the original cloning step. These cytoplasmic hybrids or ‘cybrids’ would be more than 99% human, and less than 1% animal.
5) The Department of Health consulted about this in 2005, amid some 70 questions around the future of the HFEA, and on the basis of negative responses there, the Government in December 2006 proposed that ‘the creation of hybrid and chimera embryos in vitro is prohibited, but that a regulation-making power would allow Parliament to agree exceptions to that prohibition for research purposes’.
6) The science and biotechnology communities went into overdrive, and the New Year began with a major media storm. With patient pressure groups on board they ran a very well orchestrated media campaign. The previous Prime Minister revised policy on the hoof in a media interview, and on publishing the draft bill the Government now ‘intends to accept (in part) the approach advocated by the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee that legislation should provide for certain inter-species entities to be created for research purposes under licence by the Regulator within a 14 day limit’.
7) This is all now the subject of a public consultation by the HFEA and is part of the Parliamentary pre-legislative scrutiny committee’s brief.
What are the concerns?
As stated in the File, we do not think that biology or ‘nature’ can answer the questions of
‘What are the boundaries?
Where are they?’
We suggest answers according to:
• Undermining human dignity
• Biblical views of humanity:
Image of God
‘Kinds’
Historicity/lineage
Relationships
• ‘Restoring the masterpiece’
We suggest that these proposed boundary transgressions are violations that add insult to the injury suffered by (?) human embryos who are destroyed in the process. We believe the creation of hybrids and chimeras is:
Unnecessary – there are adult stem cell alternatives
Unsafe – the effect of animal genetic material in mitochondria is unknown
Unethical – for all the reasons above
May we not go there, but try harder to understand what it is to be human. I am sure that mixing human and animal genes in the same cell, even to the smallest extent, will compromise that.
For more information, please see link:
CMF File 34 on Chimeras, hybrids and ‘cybrids’ http://www.cmf.org.uk/literature/content.asp?context=article&id=1939
Dr Andrew Fergusson – Head of Comminications, Christian Medical Fellowship
With a background as a GP, and General Secretary of the CMF between 1990-1999, Dr Fergusson went on to a portfolio career which included consulting in bioethics, serving as an elected member of the General Medical Council, and writing and broadcasting. He spent a year in the USA as President of the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity in Illinois, and is now back with the CMF as Head of Communications. www.cmf.org.uk
Click here for Response to the Call for Evidence from the Joint Committee on the Draft Human Tissues and Embryos Bill