ivf and stem cell research

1. IVF and Stem Cell Research Bath Abbey Lent Lectures 22 March 2010

2. ‘A brave new world’? A transformation in medical diagnosis and treatment Discovery of DNA revolutionised knowledge and potential applications Mixed feelings! “The little boy that science won’t save!” “Spare parts supermarket!” “Playing God” or being human?

3. The embryo as an epicentre IVF and Assisted Reproductive Technologies in forefront From IVF to embryo selection, stem cells, saviour siblings, cloning, admixed embryos, cybrids and chimeras! Massively complex – science and ethics Christians take different positions!

4. Beginning with IVF 3 million plus children born with the assistance of IVF Enabling infertile couples to conceive and give birth Not straightforward for some! Oliver O’Donovan: threat to integrity of reproduction and its purpose

5. Christian objections to IVF Dissecting strands of parenthood – if coupled with donors and surrogacy, many ‘parents’ From ‘begotten’ to ‘made’? A ‘creature’ rather than ‘gift’? RC theologians and IVF: ‘an unworthy method for the coming forth of a new life’ Taking place ‘in a context totally separated from conjugal love’

6. What happens to ‘spare embryos’? Gravest concern came from creating excess embryos Donate, discard or experiment? The Absolutist position: From fertilisation the embryo is a fully human person Experimentation is anathema! Widely held position among Christians

7. A different perspective The ‘gradualist’ position Attempts to take in scientific understanding of development Pre-14 day embryo not ‘individuated’ or ‘persons’ Pre-14 day embryo has special status and should be respected and protected But not sacrosanct

8. A ‘theological embryology’ “.. the time from which the embryo should be afforded the same degree of respect and protection as those made in God’s image remains a matter of informed moral judgement. This is because the designation of being in the image of God is finally God’s judgement as it is a gift of God’s grace and not due to the embryo’s possession of any abilities or powers.” Revd Dr Stephen Bellamy

9. A slippery slope getting greasier? Gradualist understanding enabled many Christians to accommodate and support IVF But was it now a ‘slippery slope’? Advent of Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) Selection of embryos by identifying markers Used to screen out those with life threatening diseases

10. Concerns over PGD Discrimination and eugenics by the back door? PGD not devalue lives of those with disease PGD not imply some should not be born Legitimate expression of parental love and responsibility Commodification and designer babies? Life-threatening disease not about whim or personal desire

11. But some concerns persist Carriers – a disease gene which is recessive Cystic fibrosis – two carriers; 1 in 4 chance Task Force of ESHRE: not select carriers “spare offspring the burden of having to make similar decisions for their own offspring” Introduces a further reason for selection Makes a judgement about healthy embryos Treating embryos more lightly plus impact

12. Saviour siblings Much greater controversy Two cases to the HFEA Brothers had bone marrow diseases Parents asked for tissue matched embryo Cord blood used as graft for brother One turned down – subject of headline But disease not affecting sibling (‘mutation’)

13. Crossing the boundary? Does the sibling become a ‘means to an end’? What reaction, including psychological? Freedom of child infringed or outworking of love and care for sake of healing? New Embryology Bill taken further Disease severe not only life-threatening Sibling does not have to be at risk

14. An acceptable instrumentality? Parents wanting child for him/herself Desire for a tissue type not overshadowing child as end in her/himself “Thus we conclude that tissue typing of itself does not instrumentalise a child or prevent him being welcomed with agape love and cared for as an end in himself.” Bellamy

15. Other issues connected with PGD Genes and their penetrance How much risk of disease before selection? Jodi Picoud and ‘My sister’s keeper’

16. Hello Dolly! As if this were not complicated enough! Dolly the sheep and the possibility of cloning The therapeutic potential of embryonic stem cells Cloning meets embryonic stem cell technology – human/animal embryos

17. Embryonic stem cells Stem cells in the earliest stages of embryo Truly pluripotent – progenitors of any tissue Stem cells for deriving lines of cells for transplant (eg brain and nervous system) Obtaining ESC means destroying embryo Creating embryos purely for ESC?

18. The issue of end or instrument? ‘Spare’ embryos as ends in themselves Creating embryos makes them purely instruments

19. Different kinds of clone Reproductive cloning as anathema and illegal Therapeutic cloning ethically acceptable Transferring ‘somatic’ nuclear material to an egg without its own nucleus (‘enucleated’) Artificial and asexual but needs regulating and protecting (potential human being)

20. Human and animal embryos? High ‘yuk’ factor! Few human eggs and ethical issues Possibility of using rabbit or bovine (cow) eggs No nucleus so ESC largely human Highly speculative Ambiguity of status – cow, human or what? Artificial, asexual but concerns

21. IVF and the ‘right to children’ Worrying trend of children as right not gift Choice and utilitarian persepctives New Bill and role of fathers Single or lesbian couples right to IVF ‘Removing anomalies and discrimination’ What of a child’s right to have a father? Social engineering?

22. The future? Sperm from female stem cells? Mitochondrial donors? Pressures from lobby groups (patients and scientists) Pressures from commercial advantage How can Christians respond? Are they able to engage?

23. Tom Torrance in 1984 “In experimentation with human fetuses, in the manipulation of human embryos, in test-tube fertilisation, in the cross fertilisation of human with non-human species, in surrogate motherhood, medical science has brought us to an ultimate boundary beyond which a civilised and God-fearing country committed to the sanctity of marriage and the structure of the human family, may not go.”

24. Tom Torrance “What is at stake is nothing less than the future of the human race, but what is also at stake in the integrity of the scientific and moral conscience.”

25. Where is the Church? Not much change in Christian engagement Conservative views harden – Reformed or Catholic But lines between more conservative and more liberal breaking across usual divides Engagement more easy with Gradualist approach How can Absolutists contribute too?

26. Thank you for your attention