Examination of Witnesses (Questions 231
- 239)
WEDNESDAY 30 JUNE 2004
MR WALTER
MERRICKS, MS
MICHELLE SNEADE,
MR DAVID
GOLLANCZ AND
MS BECKY
GARDINER
Chairman: Thank you very much for fighting
your way here today; I am sure we have all had a difficult morning,
but it is good to see all four of you and thank you very much.
I apologise for the five-minute delay, but we had a private meeting
beforehand. Thank you for coming to help us with this inquiry;
you have much to tell us and we have a short time so we shall
try to keep it to the point and short sharp questions and answers
will aid in that.
Geraldine Smith: Do you believe that
anybody has the right to have a child?
Q231 Chairman: We will start with
Walter Merricks and perhaps you could state very briefly who you
represent and so on.
Mr Merricks: I represent the Donor
Conception Network and Michelle is also a member of the network.
David and Becky are invited guests who are not members of the
network but who have an interesting story to tell, having been
offspring of donor insemination. I have two children who were
conceived through donor insemination and they are in their late
teens and early twenties now.
Q232 Chairman: And you are a member
of the HFEA.
Mr Merricks: I am also a member
of the HFEA, though I am not speaking on behalf of the HFEA today.
No, I do not think people have a right to have a child. It is
a very fulfilling thing if you are able to have children, but
people do not have a right to have a child at any cost at all.
That cannot be the position.
Mr Gollancz: Walter answers for
me. I would not add anything to what he said.
Ms Gardiner: Me neither.
Ms Sneade: I agree too.
Q233 Chairman: Unanimous.
Ms Sneade: Yes.
Q234 Geraldine Smith: What do you
think the state's role should be in helping people to have children?
Mr Merricks: There is medical
assistance which ought to be available to people to remove blockages
or other things which medical science can offer to people which
can free them to have children in the way they would like to have
them. I think the medical profession ought to assist in that as
far as they can. As far as donor conception is concerned that
relies partly on medical science, though not wholly, but really
on the willing participation of a third party, that is donors,
in helping us to have children. We are extremely grateful; I am
extremely grateful to the donors who helped me to have children
and I respect their position as well.
Q235 Geraldine Smith: Do you believe
that all children conceived using donated eggs and sperm have
a right to know the identity of their biological parents.
Ms Sneade: Yes, I do believe that
have a fundamental human right to know the identity of their biological
parents.
Mr Gollancz: Some time ago I took
some time to formulate a way of expressing my view on this which
is a little complicated, for which I apologise. I formulated it
thus: every individual has a right not to be deliberately deceived
or deprived of information about essential aspects of their personal
history by the public authorities. As you will gather, that is
a fairly carefully crafted statement, but it does express exactly
where I think the rights stand.
Q236 Geraldine Smith: Do you feel
that there is a difference between knowing your genetic history
and knowing the identity of a parent?
Mr Gollancz: I am afraid I do
not even understand the question.
Q237 Geraldine Smith: Is it enough
just to know the genetic history?
Mr Gollancz: I see; you mean as
it were in some technical or medical terms.
Q238 Geraldine Smith: Or should you
really know the identity of someone?
Mr Gollancz: I think identity
is much more than genetic history. The way I expressed my view
just now was that we have a right not to be deceived or deprived
of information about our personal history. So far as I am concerned,
the identity of the person responsible for one's conception is
part of one's personal history, so yes, you have a right not to
be deceived about their identity.
Q239 Geraldine Smith: Does that go
beyond just a parent? Does that include access to knowledge about
siblings, about cousins, about family history?
Mr Gollancz: Yes. I do want to
emphasise, in case we go down a blind alley, that I do not think
you can sensibly formulate a right to know everything about the
past of your family because it would be a fatuous right that nobody
could enforce. What I said, and I said it deliberately, was that
you have a right not to be deliberately deceived or deprived of
information about those things, which is rather different. In
terms of what is desirable, which is rather different from what
you have a right to, yes, most of us would probably concur that
the more we are able to know about our family background the better.
It is interesting, it is fun, it is potentially rewarding and
it makes us feel anchored and securely part of the world. If I
may, I shall just expatiate on that a little further. I am now
in my early fifties and I discovered when I was 12 that I had
been conceived by DI and that was a very isolating piece of knowledge
for me, both because of the means of my conception, being artificial
and odd, and because there was no information at all about the
donor. In my forties, in 1994, I came out, as it were, and spoke
publicly about this on television with a great deal of trepidation,
expecting to feel exposed and uncomfortable and in fact found
that and almost every subsequent outing into the public arena
very therapeutic, very healing, not least because of the greater
feeling of connectedness that it gave me. I think that is a fundamental
aspect of welfare: to feel related to the world at large.
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