Examination of Witnesses (Questions 700
- 719)
WEDNESDAY 15 SEPTEMBER 2004
REV DR
JOHN I. FLEMING,
RT REV
DR MICHAEL
NAZIR-ALI,
MRS JOSEPHINE
QUINTAVALLE AND
DR HELEN
WATT
Q700 Dr Harris: But there is no published
evidence for the specific point you made that a child might be
damaged by the fact that the other siblings who were created embryos
did not make it through.
Dr Watt: There is; I was just
saying that there was evidence coming through which this French
book has published and produced in public form.
Q701 Chairman: Where is this book?
Is it in the library?
Dr Watt: It is called L'Embryon
sur le Divan. There is also a noted psychiatrist called Phillip
Ney who has produced material on the survivor syndrome.
Q702 Mr McWalter: Is this evidence
statistical, and will it be made available to the Committee? I
do not think we can keep dealing with anecdotes.
Dr Watt: This is not just a lay
person's anecdote; this is someone with a psychological background
producing case studies.
Q703 Mr McWalter: Is it statistical?
Dr Watt: I do not believe it is.
I am not sure about Phillip Ney's. It may be.
Mr McWalter: If it is, taking Mrs Quintavalle's
point, the Committee clearly needs that.
Q704 Dr Harris: Let us accept that
there is some evidence that there is a negative impact on children
who find out that they were born of IVF, with the understanding
that embryos were destroyed and did not make it through. Is it
your view that that burden is so great that it would be better
if they were not born at all?
Dr Watt: It is certainly not my
view that they have worthless lives. As I was trying to say earlier,
there is a difference between saying a child's life is valuable,
which all children's lives are, and saying that the child was
conceived in a way that respected that value: they are two completely
separate things.
Q705 Dr Harris: There is a moral
choice to be made. You have an infertile couple and there will
either be no child or there will be a child who you argue might
have this burden. I am asking: if we as a society can operate
that choice, is the negative you have indicated so bad that it
would be better for that child never to be born in that that couple
remained infertile if the only way to do it was through the creation
of spare embryos?
Dr Watt: Can I answer that in
relation to a slightly separate issue, which is donor conception?
I personally know donor-conceived adults who are not suicidal,
who value their lives, but who are still insulted by the way they
were conceived and still regard their donor father very irresponsible
for conceiving a child he never intended to look after or meet.
The two issues can be separated, just as they can be separated
in sperm donation and in the case of any IVF treatment.
Q706 Chairman: You are all queuing
up to answer this because it is fundamental, but can you make
your answers a little more concise. I know it is very difficult
in this area. Who wants to add something that has not been said?
Rt Rev Dr Nazir-Ali: I wanted
to ask Dr Harris something.
Q707 Chairman: I do not want any
cross-questioning. We would like to find out what you think.
Rt Rev Dr Nazir-Ali: We would
like to know what you think as well.
Q708 Chairman: You will get a personal
autographed copy I assure you.
Rt Rev Dr Nazir-Ali: It is rather
a one-way process.
Q709 Dr Harris: If you want to answer
my question rhetorically—
Rt Rev Dr Nazir-Ali: It is clarification
actually. The distinction that should be made is between the dignity
of any human person and how that human person has come to be.
Take the case of reproductive cloning if that ever happened. A
cloned human-being would enjoy the same sort of dignity as any
of us, but that would not mean that we would necessarily approve
of reproductive cloning. I hope no-one here does. That distinction
can be made between processes for producing a human-being and
the dignity of that person.
Dr Harris: I understand what you ask,
but if I oppose reproductive cloning, it is not because I think
that the person produced would be so damaged by knowing that they
were a clone—
Q710 Chairman: I am sorry, we are
getting into a theological debate in a way, and I want you to
have the chance to answer concisely the questions. I do not want
people to feel that they are being put under pressure. Say what
you think.
Rev Dr Fleming: Two very brief
points. I think that the literature is characterised by a remarkable
lack of curiosity on the part of governments and researchers about
what children conceived and born of reproductive technology themselves
think; and I regard what they think about it at least as important
as whatever benefits you say may accrue to parents. Secondly,
there exists a group in Melbourne of young people who have allowed
me, because of my involvement in this kind of regulation, to listen
in so to speak on their website chat-room, who are furious about
the circumstances of their origins, who would actually say it
would have been better had this not occurred; but of course they
do value their lives; but they remain also very angry with a state
that permitted their origins to be masked in anonymity and in
some cases an anonymity that they have not yet been able to pierce.
Mrs Quintavalle: I was going to
make the first point that John Fleming made so eloquently, but
I make another point. It is not only the psychological consequences
that we need to think about; it is also the medical consequences.
I have heard many IVF specialists suggest that IVF has been developed
by experimenting on children, and those are very serious people
whose views I hold in great esteem, not coming from a pro-life
perspective. That is something we need to look at. Are we using
people as guinea pigs?
Q711 Dr Turner: Bishop, your earlier
answer neatly encapsulated for me the spread of theological opinion
regarding the moral status of the embryo. If we seek to compare
the status of a five-day old embryo with that of a five-year old
child, what are the views of all of you who represent the spectrum
concerning the possibility that, as has happened, a five-day old
embryo was sacrificed in order to save the life of a five-year
old child?
Rt Rev Dr Nazir-Ali: I would not
go that way, but the first part of your question is a valid one.
The point is that if the embryo has the potential to be a person—no-one
here would disagree with that—we must use the precautionary
principle. If we do not know when there is a person, even if I
take the gradualist approach to personhood, which has often been
the approach in Christian tradition, that a person emerges gradually.
Even if you take that approach and you do not know when there
is a human person, you must take the precautionary approach. This
is exactly what the legislation does in terms of the 14-day rule.
Now, there are some who would extend that precautionary approach
to beyond the 14-day rule and say that the embryo is already a
human person, and there should be no research allowed at all.
The difference is not all that much. The legislation is very tight
about what you can do with an embryo, and that includes of course
stem cell research questions, to which we may come later.
Q712 Dr Turner: I am thinking particularly
of the sort of situation where an embryo is selected in order
to be tissue compatible with a diseased existing sibling.
Rev Dr Fleming: The first thing
to say, as I am representing SPUC, that SPUC has no theological
view of the matter. Its position is based upon the biological
facts, that from the beginning a new human life comes into existence
at fertilisation. It takes its position under the universal declaration
of human rights, that everyone has a right to be treated as a
person. That is in both the covenant and the universal declaration
itself. Personhood is a philosophical notion about which you correctly
point out there are a range of philosophical opinions. Prescinding
from that, what the documents say is whether or not you think
a human-being is a person or not is not relevant; they have to
be treated as a person. That being the case, if the embryo is
a human-being, it is always wrong to sacrifice one human-being
for the sake of another, in much the same way as it would be wrong
to sacrifice you for the sake of me.
Q713 Dr Turner: Do you see any moral
or theological distinction between terminating a perfectly biological
pregnancy because of a serious genetic disease discovered by amniocentesis,
and pre-implantation of genetic diagnosis of embryos to avoid
serious disease?
Rev Dr Fleming: The moral act
is the same: you are destroying a human-being; there is an intentional
destruction. It is not a question of theology. You keep referring
to theology but I have certainly not made that reference point.
I am saying simply that it is a human-being, and as a human-being
it has fundamental human rights and we cannot prescind from that
ground rule position.
Rt Rev Dr Nazir-Ali: PGD was allowed
precisely because PND, which may lead to termination, would then
be avoided; and it was thought to be a lesser evil—not a
greater good but a lesser evil. That is why PGD was allowed only
in the cases of serious heritable disease. The further step that
was taken with the Hashmi case was to allow tissue typing when
PGD had to be done in any case, so that a sibling could be helped
who also had that heritable disorder. Now that the HFEA has extended
this to helping siblings without heritable disorders, that is
a separate move. It is moving beyond the kind of scenario you
were talking about. That has been my difficulty with it; it is
moving further towards instrumentality I think.
Q714 Dr Turner: Bishop, your evidence
states that the Church of England is profoundly suspicious of
the right to have a child when this involves more than normal
corrective procedures. Are you concerned that what is normal can
change?
Rt Rev Dr Nazir-Ali: I think that
the emphasis is on the right to have a child, but there must be
a balance between reproductive freedom—which the Church
of England recognises of course—and the common good; and
also the good of the child. The Whittaker case is a classic example
of this. Do parents have the right to produce a child so that
it may be able to help an existing child regardless of any heritable
conditions? If they have the right to produce a child to help
another child, why should that child not then be used to help
other relatives? All human-beings have equal value; so if a child
needs help, why not a parent, or an aunt or an uncle? That is
why, when I was in the HFEA, we drew the line at Hashmi because
there was the need to have PGD because of heritable disorder,
whereas if you move further than that, then you are moving to
a situation where the child is possibly or merely the means to
an end, rather than a child wanted for him or herself.
Q715 Dr Harris: Society does not
make judgments generally about who can have children. We do not
say that there are age requirements or whether you are fit to
be parents. What is the justification for making such a judgment
in respect of where medical interventions are required?
Rev Dr Fleming: The justification
is the status involved. I happen to be a married Catholic priest,
which is slightly unusual, with three kids. We make choices about
the number of children that we will have. One the state or the
technology/scientific experts become involved, they have to make
choices about when or where they will want to apply their arts,
and it is not unreasonable therefore, if you ask somebody to provide
a service for you, that they have some say in what conditions
they would be prepared to be involved in this case in the generation
of a new human-being.
Q716 Dr Harris: Do SPUC and CORE,
which are not, they say, religious bodies, have a problem with
unmarried couples and lesbian couples having children through
assisted reproduction where there is not any loss and creation
of spare embryos and destruction of those embryos?
Rev Dr Fleming: What is at stake
there is the good of the child. If you take the view that the
good of the child is not served by not having married parents,
a stable married relationship, then clearly it would not matter
what reproductive technology you were going to apply, you would
not agree with it. Secondly, I draw your attention to the concerns
that SPUC has raised, which are often just glossed over, and that
is the burgeoning literature which indicates the damage done to
children born of reproductive technology, some of which will only
really become apparent in the years that are ahead. I wonder why
it is we have not made greater emphasis, for example, on the need
for a better provision of informed consent so that parents do
understand that in vitro fertilisation for example is not significantly
risk-free for any child born of that process.
Q717 Dr Harris: Just like a natural
pregnancy.
Rev Dr Fleming: No, the difference
is significantly greater risk than natural. That is what I am
saying. If you have read the report we put to you and the literature,
it is greater risk. If that is the case, then anybody that offers
any medical procedure in which there are risks, they ought to
be required to disclose fully the nature of those risks so that
people can make an informed consent.
Mrs Quintavalle: As far as CORE
is concerned, the position that we take is that we want to see
fertility treatment provided for infertile people, and in that
respect we are looking for something that mirrors restoring to
couples what nature should have given them. Nature provides a
male and a female, and we defend adamantly the right of the child
to have a father. We are not up on Buckingham Palace yet, but
we fully support fathers' rights. We believe that that is the
way nature intended it, and that what the state does to help infertile
couples should reflect that. Clearly, the lesbian or the gay solutions
are not for people who are per se infertile; they choose
not to go down that road. That applies also to the grandmother
who wants a child. She is not infertile; she is simply naturally
past her fertility stage. I want to go back to the designer baby
because there is not a lot of time today, but the couple who—
Q718 Dr Harris: There will be other
questions. I am only allowed to ask—
Mrs Quintavalle: This relates
to that as well. The couple who go for IVF to design a baby as
a match for a sibling, who have no genetic disease, do not need
to go to the IVF clinic; they could have a child naturally, so
they are using—
Q719 Dr Harris: I would like to respond
to that, but I have to stick to my line of questioning, which
is this issue of what nature intended. If you argue that we should
not interfere with what nature intended, in respect of God or
nature made people infertile or gay—
Mrs Quintavalle: No, I did not
say that.
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