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SRT Special Report on Genetically Modified Food
A crucial report on one of today's most controversial issues, drawn from the findings of SRT's 5 year expert working group study on Genetic Engineering in non-human species
SRT General Report
A briefer report dealing with SRT's work over the past year and an update on cloning animals and cloning human embryos.
General information about the General AssemblyEngineering Genesis and SRT's Work Update on Cloning Issues Animal Cloning
Society Religion and Technology Project
Report to the 1999 General Assembly
Board of National Mission, Church of Scotland
Engineering Genesis and SRT's Work
November 1998 was a great milestone for the SRT Project with the publication of its new book "Engineering Genesis" by Earthscan Publications, the culmination its four year expert working group on the ethical and societal implications of genetic engineering in non-human species. It is a collaborative effort of the whole group, edited by SRT Director Donald Bruce and his wife Ann, to whom particular thanks is due. SRT pays tribute to the remarkable spirit of hard work, inspiration and creativity of the 10 Working Group members, giving a unique depth and balance of insights capable of holding its own in the secular arena. It led to interviews on Good Morning Scotland and Radio 4's Today programme, and has been receiving good reviews. Tom Wilkie a respected journalist and head of bioethics for the Wellcome Trust wrote in the New Statesman "It is simply the best available exposition of what is going on in plant and animal biotechnology and of the rights and wrongs of what is being done... No atheist has managed so considered, profound and well-researched an analysis of the age of biotechnology. The Church of Scotland has outstripped every other denomination in attempting to make sense of the modern world and in finding the appropriate place for religion in an age of science."
This careful backroom work has opened up extraordinary opportunities for the SRT Director to speak on biotechnology issues at the highest levels. Dr Bruce was asked by the Minister for Science to take part in consultation on how to engage the public on issues arising out of biotechnology. He was invited as one of the three UK representatives in a summit meeting of national bioethics committees in Japan. At the associated World Congress on Bioethics he was invited to give the main ethical paper in a debate on cloning. He spoke of SRT's work before leading figures in bioethics from around the world, such as the chair of President Clinton's bioethics advisory committee. He was an invited observer to the UNESCO International Committee on Bioethics, whose official statement on cloning quotes the Church of Scotland's 1997 Assembly Report on Cloning.
Dr Bruce also spoken at international conferences in Dubai, Netherlands, Cambridge and St George's House Windsor, and in a debate at the Oxford Union, where he and one of the top Roslin researchers proposed the motion "This house believes cloning human beings is unethical" against Richard Dawkins and editor of the New Scientist. Before a packed house, Dr Bruce laid out the Kirk's ethical case and his side narrowly won a lively debate, 210 to 189. It was a rare privilege to give a Christian voice in this most famous of debating chambers. Cloning also led many media appearances including the Jonathan Dimbleby Programme, BBC, STV and Channel 4 News, national and local radio and the national press.
SRT's environment work also continues with the setting up of the European Christian Environment Network, submissions to the EC on energy policy and the UK government on sustainability. There are indeed too many opportunities for one Director. The SRT Trust has been set up to raise external funding to find additional effort to meet the growing opportunities for the SRT Project to be the church's mission in these key areas of national life.
In contrast, the report recommends, without any ethical justification, amending regulations to allow cloning human embryos to reprogramme them to produce human cells to replace damaged tissue in some serious medical conditions. This poses an acute ethical dilemma. If the research worked there might be help for some serious diseases, but this entirely novel use of the embryo raises very serious ethical doubts, and inevitably reopens the debate on the status of the embryo. The 1984 Warnock Report urged that the embryo be given "special status". To clone embryos and redirect them from totipotency to use as spare part cells would, de facto, remove this status, and reduce the embryo to a mere means towards an end. Moreover, if it is wrong to clone people, it can hardly be ethical to create a cloned embryo, knowing it must be destroyed because it would be unethical to allow it become a baby. The Government should not regulate without a much wider public discussion, and the time has now come for the Kirk to form a view on these new developments.
Animal Cloning
The report from the Farm Animal Welfare Council on animal cloning agrees on many points with the General Assembly's view. Animals have intrinsic worth but while there is no objection as such to cloning them, precaution is needed and some applications give concern. A moratorium is sought on commercial use until significant animal welfare doubts are resolved. More worrying was a statement "It is not clear that a radical distinction between human and non-human is now defensible, either biologically or ethically". Ethically this is naive and dangerous, if we thereby justified treating certain types of people the way we treat some animals. There are also disturbing implications that in two reports one is rightly cautious about cloning animals and the other enthusiastic for cloning human embryos.
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