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PRESS RELEASE - 31 July 2000 - Immediate release
Need for Wider Public Debate on Therapeutic Cloning
Beware of "Gradualism" in Ethics
Dr Donald Bruce, Society Religion & Technology Project, Church of Scotland
Contact tel. 0131-240 2250, Fax 0131-240 2239, srtp@srtp.org.uk http://www.srtp/org.uk
or Church of Scotland Press Office 0131- 240 2243
Dr Bruce is Director of the Church of Scotland Society Religion and Technology Project, assessing ethical issues in technology for Scotland's national church. He is a leading authority on the ethics of cloning and genetic engineering, co-editor of the book "Engineering Genesis".
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In 1996 the world's first cloned sheep were announced, and a year later Dolly raised the possibility of cloning people from ordinary body cells. The overwhelming response was rightly against extending the use from animals to humans. No one knew then if whether there could be ethically acceptable uses of the technology to help research certain human diseases. Now the science has become a little clearer, there is pressure from the scientific community for very wide ranging powers to allow the technology to be used to clone human embryos for potential therapeutic purposes. Society should beware of a hidden ethical "gradualism" - making far-reaching ethical changes by the back door, by claiming they are only small steps.
LibDem MP Evan Harris claims that no new ethical issues are raised - citing doctors, patients groups and scientists. But these are the groups most likely not to raise ethical concerns. What he omits to mention is that in response to the 1998 Government consultation on the issue, most of the ethicists who responded thought it did indeed raise new issues. If you are ill you go to a doctor, but if you want an authoritative view on ethics of medicine, we should first ask ethics professionals. And plenty of doctors and scientists do not agree with the view he puts forward.
When MPs debated embryo research and voted in 1990 these applications were not even on the horizon scientifically, let alone MP's order papers. What Mr Harris and others are proposing is an apparently subtle change in law but it has huge ethical implications. We have allowed - still highly controversially - limited embryo research. This is mostly for human infertility, where the embryo is still effectively seen as a whole entity. This was an ethical compromise between treating the embryo as simply a ball of cells or as fully human. It left the embryo a special status. The new proposals would push the compromise firmly and finally down the "ball of cells" side, by allowing embryos to become resources from which to take cells, for cell replacement therapy. It becomes simply a means to an end. This is an ethical "gradualism" claiming a small change that is actually very profound, ethical issues different from those which MPs debated in 1990.
Mr Harris is also reported to fear the views of "influencial religious organisations". We in the Church of Scotland were already in ethical discussion with Roslin scientists over cloning before Dolly thrust them into the public arena. Our part in raising and clarifying the issues has been welcomed by many working in the scientific and medical community. Earlier this year the SRT Project was invited by the Bio-Industry Association to present ethical and religious views to MPs on this subject at the House of Commons, a group which included Mr Harris, because this influencial scientific organisation wanted ethical concerns to be put in a balanced way. In our Presentation to MPs, we argued that the routine use of human embryos for this purpose would be widely opposed by many people, not merely some religious organisations. We urged that research should rather aim at avoiding use of embryos, by direct programming from one body tissue type to another. We recognised the problem that even this might require some human embryo research. This poses a deep dilemma whether a very limited and fixed number of experiments should be allowed to obtain the data necessary to avoid any such use of embryos in future. The general principle, however, is not to use embryos routinely for cell therapies. For more, see Human Embryonic Cloning - A Submission to the Chief Medical Officer's Expert Group on Cloning.
At the Edinburgh Festival Fringe from 6-27 August Y-Touring theatre company present a play on cloning dilemmas called "Learning to Love the Grey" at Pleasance Theatre, sponsored by the Wellcome Trust. This is a rare chance to come and debate the issues. But we need much more.
These dilemmas are not to be decided in a hurry. Scientists in the field agree that research in this area will take many years to know if their proposed revolutionary techniques would actually work and if they would be therapeutically viable. Scientists and ethicists have been discussing these issues for 2 years. There was a limited Government consultation in 1998, with a mere 112 responses on therapeutic cloning issue. But this was before before the ground breaking stem cell discoveries and before most people knew what were the issues at stake.
What we have not seen is a wide ranging public debate, like those which the HFEA promoted on foetal tissue and other issues. Rather than have the Government sit on the Donaldson report, it should be opened to further public discussion, so that a wider public mind can be canvassed and not merely the views of lobbyists. MPs also need to be much better informed when eventually they come to debate it. These issues are too large and too far reaching to be scrambled through by a rushed parliamentary procedure.
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