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Joint Press Release from the Society Religion & Technology Project,
and the Board of Social Responsibility of the Church of Scotland
Our Background Paper on the Donaldson Report explains our position in more detail.
See also SRT's pages on Human and Animal Cloning issues
The Church of Scotland today welcomed the serious consideration of the ethical issues by the Donaldson report, which brings these to wider public attention. Dr Donald Bruce says, "We support research to treat serious diseases by replacement cells, but where embryos are used as the source this poses serious ethical problems, stepping over a new ethical barrier." Rev Dr Richard Corbett said, "Until now the embryo has been treated as an entity in itself, used for research which benefits other embryos. To use embryos as a source for body cells would reduce the embryo to a mere resource from which convenient parts could be taken."
The 1996 Church of Scotland General Assembly affirmed the "special status" of the human embryo, as created by God, rather than just being a "ball of cells". But it also recognised the potential benefits of embryo research under limited circumstances, as in the present HFE Act. The Donaldson recommendations would effectively remove the "special status" of an embryo under the 1990 Act. They would shift the present ethical compromise to a position where the embryo was seen as little more than a ball of cells, nothing more than a means to an end.
The use of nuclear transfer cloning to generate cells of the same genetic type as the patient has medical potential, but it would also make it easier for illegal reproductive cloning to be attempted.
The Kirk considers that the creation of cloned embryos for routine use as a cell replacement therapy should not be allowed, but nuclear transfer research should focus on avoiding use of embryos, to enable direct programming from one body tissue type to another, as proposed by the Roslin Institute and Geron Biomed. Dr Bruce believes that, "Since direct reprogramming might be impossible without limited human embryo research, this poses a deep ethical dilemma. Should a very limited number of experiments should be allowed to obtain the data necessary to avoid any such use of embryos in future?"
The Church of Scotland welcomes the decision to put these questions to a free vote in Parliament, but argues that autumn is too soon to have a vote on such complex and major issues which are little understood by either the public or MP's. Dr Bruce says "Society has not had, and urgently needs, a wide ranging public debate before a Parliamentary vote is taken. The 1998 consultation did not meet this need. The Donaldson report should now form the start of the debate, not the end."
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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.
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Contact : Dr Donald Bruce, SRT Project 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
or Rev. Dr Richard Corbett, Board of Social Responsibility, 01506 852825
Dr Bruce is Director of the Church of Scotland Society Religion and Technology Project, assessing ethical issues in technology for Scotland's national church, and a leading authority on the ethics of cloning and genetic engineering. The Kirk is at the forefront of the ethical debate over cloning and stem cell technology and has for several years been in dialogue with Roslin researchers.
Rev Dr Richard Corbett is a parish minister in West Lothian and has a background in science.
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