Embryo research: a source of hope or horror?
(wz) As MPs prepare to debate a Bill updating the law on embryo research, Science Editor Roger Highfield examines the complex issues at stake
What do we mean by being human? At what point does a life wink into being? What choices can be exercised at that moment, and by whom?
Should we allow DNA from more than one person to be used to create a child? Should we allow a deaf couple to take action to ensure their son is also deaf?
These are profound issues in terms of science, law and morality - and this is why the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, due to be debated this month in Parliament, is among the most divisive to have come before MPs.
Indeed, it is so controversial that the Prime Minister has been forced to allow a free vote on the most contentious elements.
The Bill deals with experiments on the human embryo, and the way in which infertility treatments are regulated. Rationalists may claim it is simply a way for legislation to catch up with the latest scientific developments.
But where these fundamental issues are concerned, nothing is that simple. The Bill’s opponents, mostly from the pro-life community, say it will lead to the creation of “monsters”, and even sanctions “the ultimate incest” - the creation of eggs and sperm from the same stem cells, which are then used to produce an embryo.
Scientists and patient groups see only the hope these technologies offer to the ill and infertile.
As ever with legislation, the devil is in the detail. So, with the help of James Lawford Davies, a lawyer at the London-based firm Clifford Chance and lecturer in law and medicine at the Institute for Human Genetics at Newcastle University, I have taken a closer look at what exactly is proposed. more…
From: »The Daily Telegraph«