Therapeutic Cloning

There has been much interest in the recommendations of the joint report of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and the Human Genetics Advisory Commission on Cloning Issues in Reproduction, Science and Medicine. This is the basis of the Chief Medical Officer's recommendations to the Government that existing legislation which already outlaws human reproductive cloning (i.e. attempts to manufacture identical humans) should be strengthened and recommends specific and tightly regulated statutory permission to extend research which could lead to the treatment of diseases.

I feel strongly that it was quite inappropriate for a subject of this gravity to be the subject of a 10 Minute Rule Bill. Accordingly, although I attended the debate on 31st October, and listened to both sides, I did not vote. In fact, less than one quarter of MPs voted on this issue.

Inevitably, constituents have been offering me contradictory advice. Some have written from specific moral or religious standpoints. Others have shared their personal experience of illness and disease which may be treated if this research is made lawful. This places on me a heavy responsibility to come to an informed judgement. I have listened to many people, to pressure groups and charities, to different Christian views and to moral philosophers. I also have my own religious, moral and practical views, based on my active membership of the Church of England, and of the challenges faced by Sue and me on the birth of our first child who died of a rare genetic disorder after only a few days with us.

So my advisors are many, but I can come to only one view and cast one vote.

The practical benefits of supporting the recommendation to the Government are easy to follow. There are thousands of people in Salisbury and South Wiltshire, many of whom you and I know personally, who could benefit. Some of the possibilities include growing nerve cells to treat strokes, Parkinson's Disease, Alzheimers, spinal cord injury and multiple sclerosis; insulin-producing cells to treat diabetes; bone cells to treat osteoporosis; eye cells to treat macular degeneration.

To do this we need 'stem' cells which are unspecialised - unlike embryo cells (post-14 days), which can only develop into one of the 216 types of cell that make up the human body. One day it might be possible to re-programme adult cells. But scientists first need to use cells from embryos to learn how to reach that point. Anyway, cell lines can be created from individual stem cells - so eventually there should be no need to create embryos - but the researchers aren't there yet. Remember cloning human cells was legalised 10 years ago. It is the purpose of the research they are seeking to extend.

Whatever the science involved, the love that makes a child is miraculous and awe-inspiring. But when does that life begin? I take the traditional Christian view that human life is a continuum and it does not start at the moment of conception. Apart from being the logical scientific and evolutionary view, this is also the philosophical tradition of Christians. Aristotle believed that only when a recognisable human form had grown, at 40 days at least from conception, could an intellectual soul exist. Saint Gregory and St Augustine preached that view, as did the Celtic Church. This was entrenched in canon law in the Catholic West, and in the work of St Thomas Aquinas. However, in 1869, Pope Pius IX published a Bull which remains the basis of Roman Catholic teaching today, asserting that human life, body and soul, starts at the moment of conception.

Of course it is only in the past 50 years or so that we have known enough to come to judgements based on scientific fact. I am completely convinced that not everything that can be done by science should be done. That is where Parliament comes in, representing the conflicting views of our people and adjudicating on how far science should go.

The moral arguments for and against permitting research using human embryos turn on the status accorded to the pre-14 day embryo. As Baroness Warnock has put it, "Is the fact that, under certain circumstances, they may develop into human beings sufficient to make us regard them now, at the stage they are at, as full human beings (in which case of course they should be protected from exploitation and certainly from being used as research material, just as other human beings, including children should). Or is the fact that they have no human attributes, and if left in the laboratory no chance of acquiring such attributes, enough to allow us to treat them more as human tissue than as human persons?".

I share the view of the former Archbishop of York, John Habgood, who has argued that the value we attach to the lives of human beings (a value which is the root of all morality) increases as human life develops and that we are therefore entitled, morally, to hold the life of a recently fertilised egg as less to be protected than that of a foetus at a later stage, or of a baby when it is born. The Archbishop argued that not only is this morally acceptable, but that it is in fact what we do. Nature is profligate. We do not mourn for wasted sperm and eggs, alive though they are, nor for the three-quarters of fertilised eggs which are lost before implant, half of which are genetically impaired. As the Bishop of Oxford has put it, "If every fertilised egg was indeed a soul, that is, an immortal spiritual reality created independently of the biological process, then, according to these figures, three-quarters of heaven would be populated by souls that lived for less than a week. This does not seem congruous with what we know of a God who has chosen to create persons through a process of development."

And what of the 'slippery slope' argument? First, it depends whether the slope is going up or down. I share the view that the slope is mostly uphill - two steps forward, one step back. Even if people believe that the slope is downhill, if once the first step is taken is it inevitable that the next step should follow? Is it morally right to prohibit the first step? There is no logical necessity which demands that the second or third steps should follow the first. This is the job of Parliament - and Parliament has generally done that job well. Moral philosophers like Baroness Warnock recognise this. She has written, "We are not nothing but our genes. We must recognise that we are conscious beings able to form our own purposes, with powers both to understand and to control the laws of biology, as well as of physics. It may be our moral duty to scrutinise, criticise and regulate the projects of biological scientists, in the light of our concept of a common good. It cannot be our moral duty to repress and prohibit altogether the exercise of their inventive and creative genius."

I agree with the Bishop of Oxford that, "It is good that we can interact with nature, as God's co-workers, in bringing about the health which he wills for humanity and those healthy children that he desires."

Theologically I believe the human intellectual abilities that allow us to understand and manipulate our world are God-given powers. To scientific knowledge and the powers it confers we must add wisdom to accept the good and refuse the bad. I believe the benefits that may be achieved in healing the sick in this case outweigh the downside of using cells which might have the potential for a full human life. Thus, if the Government asks Parliament to decide, on a free vote, I will have the moral confidence to exercise my judgement in favour of extending research on embryos to include therapeutic as well as reproductive purposes.