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The world of biotechnology and genetic engineering is currently as fertile as a rain forest. Almost every week some new discovery hits the news which opens up unexpected new paths and opportunities for manipulating the living world. Not everything is a controversial as Dolly the cloned sheep here in Edinburgh, but enough to expand our horizons into uncharted and unfamiliar territory. See out pages on Genetic Engineering for some of the examples. But with all this growth and diversity, one of the most controversial questions is what we as a society should allow about the commercial application of the bewildering range of inventions and ideas which are coming out of the world's research laboratories. Do we have any effective say in what is going on, or is it mostly in the hands of private business or impenetrable bureaucracy? This has come to a focus on the question of whether we should allow the patenting of living organisms and sections of the genome of ourselves and other creatures. This is currently allowed in the USA but hotly disputed in Europe.
Members of the European Parliament (MEP's) are currently debating a draft Directive of the European Commission (EC) on patenting biotechnological inventions, which has aroused great controversy. There is a split between those who support the postion of much of the biotechnology industry, which is in favour of patenting living material, and those sympathetic to populist and environmentalist views, who are adamantly opposed to it. Into this highly charged atmosphere, a working group representing the main European protestant churches submitted an independent view to the EC and the European Parliament last October. This sought to spell out the unacceptable ethical implications of crucial parts of the proposed legislation, but also indicated parts which were worthy of support.
The churches' submission aroused a lot of debate within the Parliament, and led to an opportunity for the churches group to present their views to MEP's at a special meeting at the European Parliament in Strasbourg on 12 March 1997. We challenged MEP's to amend the EC draft Directive to prevent the patenting of living matter as such, or sections of the human genome. The MEP's are currently debating the Directive in committee, and are expected to vote on it at one of the Parliament's plenary sessions in June. The purpose of the Directive is to harmonise the rather muddled patent legislation across the 15 member states of the European Union (EU - which means all the major counties of western Europe, except Switzerland and Norway). But in the process it could establish the principle that sections of the human genome, and also genetically modified animals and plants could be patented. From the churches' point of view this is unethical, since these are ultimately God's creation, and the common property of humankind, not the exclusive right of biotechnology organisations.
The meeting with MEP's was organised jointly by support groups for people suffering from genetic diseases and the bioethics working group of the European Ecumenical Commission for Church and Society (EECCS). Dr Donald Bruce, the Director of the Society, Religion and Technology Project of the Church of Scotland, was the spokesman on behalf of the churches' group. He told MEP's of the concerns of many people - both in and outside the churches - that too little attention was being given to ethical aspects which are implied, but rarely ever spelt out, in patenting on biotechnological inventions. In principle, the churches warmly support biotechnology research into the cure of diseases and also developments in agriculture and environmental improvement, but not everything that is being developed is ethically acceptable. The churches agree with the patients' support groups that there is a need to provide the right climate for investment to encourage research into genetic diseases and other applications of biotechnology. But we argue that there is no need to go as far as patenting parts of the human genome. As well as being unethical, in some situations it might even hold back progress, through a monopoly of one company. The churches' group maintains that sufficient protection of the researchers' investment would be given if patents were awarded to specific applications of gene sequences, but not the sequences themselves. There are also concerns that gradually the distinction between what is living and what is not is becoming blurred by allowing "discoveries" to be termed as "inventions", just by virtue of the fact that someone has had to put in some mental effort to make the discovery.
The church group also pointed to the need for a better way to assess the ethical acceptability of biotechnology research. Often the public is unaware of a discovery until it is published as a patent, and it is then almost too late to affect the implementation of the technology. A parallel system for the ethical assessment of inventions brought for patenting needs to be introduced, to make biotechnology more publicly accountable. Some MEP's were clearly in favour of the churches' proposals, and the Environment Committee of the European Parliament has itself proposed the idea of an ethical commission.
Church of Scotland urges European Parliament
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On 22 May 1997 the Church of Scotland General Assembly passed the following motion :
The General Assembly urge the European Commission and European Parliament to amend the draft Directive on the Legal Protection of Biotechnological Inventions, to ensure that living organisms and genetic material of human origin are in themselves unpatentable, as parts of God's creation, and to set up, in parallel with the patenting process, an appropriate European system by which the ethical acceptability of biotechnological inventions can be decided, with statutory rights for the public to present their views. |
On behalf of the Working Group on Bioethics and Biotechnology
European Ecumenical Commission for Church and Society,
8 Rue du Fosse des Treize
F-67000, Strasbourg.
France
Tel. +33 3 88 15 27 60
Fax +33 3 88 15 27 61
eeccs@media-net.fr
http://www.cec-kek.org/English/cs-bioethics.htm
More About the Issues Involved
European Churches' Submissions 1996-98
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Patenting Life?
... Home Page on Patenting Living Organisms, with a short simple introduction to the issues involved.
Church of Scotland Report on Patenting Living Organisms
... The SRT Project's Report to Church of Scotland's Assembly, to be debated on 22 May 1997, containing the main substance of a formal submission to the European Commission and European Parliament on this issue
SRT Pages on Genetic Engineering and Cloning
Bioethics Working Group of the Conference of European ChurchesFor further information about the Church and Society Commission working group which made these submissions
This page has been produced by the Society Religion and Technology Project of the Church of Scotland. For more about our work on other issues, see our Other SRT Project pages, or our SRT Publications List, or our On-line SRT Newsletter.
We'd also welcome any comments you may have. We don't claim to have said the last word!
If you want to send us a comment or obtain further information,
email us at :
mailto:srtp@srtp.org.uk
or send an ordinary letter or fax to :
Dr.Donald M.Bruce,
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This page was last revised on 26 April 2002
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