Memorandum 40
Submission from the Linacre Centre for
Healthcare Ethics
1. The Linacre Centre for Healthcare Ethics
is a bioethics research institute under the trusteeship of the
Catholic Trust for England and Wales. We publish material, run
conferences and provide speakers on a range of bioethical issues,
and also offer advice and information to individual scientists,
health professionals and patients. This Submission has been prepared
on behalf of the Centre by Dr Helen Watt, the Director of the
Centre, and Anthony McCarthy, its Research Fellow.
2. We welcome the opportunity to respond
to the Science and Technology Committee's Inquiry into Government
Proposals for the Regulation of Hybrid and Chimera Embryos. Our
concerns in this area relate not only to respect for the lives
of human embryos who may be created (in some cases, by destroying
other human embryos), but to respect for the value and meaning
of human procreation. Such respect can, we believe, be violated
by substantial human contributions to the production even of embryos—or
embryo-like entities—which are clearly non-human. However,
it is more seriously violated by contributions to an embryo who
is—or may well be—human, and who is deprived of human
parents, for whom is substituted an animal progenitor.
3. The destruction of embryos is our most
serious concern: we are opposed to all research involving a lethal
attack on a human moral subject, of any age or stage of development.
In the words of the Declaration of Helsinki, "In research
on man, the interest of science and society should never take
precedence over considerations related to the wellbeing of the
subject" (III.4). A human subject is nothing more or
less than a living human organism (which is not to say that this
organism is reducible to its various physical parts). The human
subject has objective rights and interests in his or her wellbeing
and survival: rights and interests which relate to the special
nature of the rational human kind. Such rights and interests are
present in young children, and indeed embryos and fetuses, who
have a moral stake (albeit an unconscious stake) in their own
wellbeing as members of the human kind, no less than older human
subjects.
4. Human beings can be created in other
ways than fertilization: for example, by embryo splitting or cell
nuclear transfer—including, perhaps, cell nuclear transfer
using a non-human ovum. Such new methods of creating embryos give
rise to new ethical concerns. While we are opposed to all research
on embryos, this is not to say that a ban on particular forms
of embryo research is not also highly desirable: there are various
levels at which the human (or possibly human) embryo can be harmed
or degraded.
5. It is difficult to know whether some
novel techniques will result in a genuine human embryo.[34]
In view of this, it is a matter of basic moral prudence to avoid
creating an embryo who may well be human—that is, whose
moral status is ambiguous. This problem is in no way solved by
destroying the embryo, whether at 14 days or at five: abuse of
human subjects is not cancelled by the greater abuse of ending
the subject's life.
6. If the embryo is, indeed, human, there
is a particular wrong that has been done to it, apart from the
wrong of creating it for the sole purpose of research, or even
the wrong of creating it deliberately disabled (as in the case
of some cloned embryos[35])
so as to study the disease process and/or test the efficacy of
certain drugs. Serious as these wrongs are, there is an additional
wrong in the case of animal-human hybrids, in that the embryo's
dignity is violated by the very structure of its creation.
7. Again, this is not simply because the
embryo is the product of a manufacturing process—though
this is itself a serious offence against the embryo's dignity.
Embryos manufactured as if they were products are particularly
likely to be viewed and treated as products; indeed, they are
sometimes explicitly referred to as products, as in the Government's
White Paper itself.[36]
However, the embryo made from animal components is still further
alienated from any possibility of parental respect or protection,
in that this embryo may have literally no human parents.
8. Take the case of an embryo who is conceived
via transfer of an adult somatic cell nucleus to an animal ovum
from which the nucleus has been removed. Like any clone, such
an embryo has no true genetic parents;[37]
moreover it lacks even the fractional element of genetic motherhood
found in a woman's provision of an enucleated ovum. The embryo's
quasi-mother is not, in this case, a woman who donates a "gutted"
ovum to its formation, but is, instead, a non-human animal. The
hybrid embryo would be even more isolated from the human community
than other clone embryos (this is not, however, to ignore the
serious ethical problems inherent in ovum donation, both in terms
of risks to women's health and in terms of lack of respect for
the parental role such donation embodies).
9. An embryo may be created in other ways—for
example, by fusing existing human embryos or embryonic cell lines
with non-human cells. Again, resulting embryos will have no human
parents, even in the fractional sense of the woman who provides
the mitochondrial DNA and other parts of an enucleated human ovum.
It is easy to see how a human chimera may be treated with less
respect than embryos who have human parents, given the low status
attributed—in our view wrongly—to its embryonic progenitor
(this progenitor may itself be seen as having barely more status
than the animal embryo with which its cells are combined). More
importantly, the chimera's creation will require the destruction
of a pre-existing embryo, whether in the course of the experiment
itself, or in the production of the embryonic cell-line from which
the new embryo is created. To be deliberately formed from the
bodily remains of another human embryo is, again, an offense to
the dignity of the embryo created, as well as that of the earlier
embryo in whose death the scientist is already complicit.
10. It is true that many chimera or hybrid
embryos may not, in fact, be human embryos, even if human embryonic
cells are used to create them.[38]
Leaving aside the risk of creating human embryos, and assuming
that such embryos would not be created, we believe the production
of hybrids and chimeras can still offend against human dignity.
Such production seems at once too close to, and too far removed
from, normal human procreation—as can be seen from the intuitions
of many members of the public when considering the morality of
trans-species fertilization, even where no human embryo will result.
11. It should be remembered that animal-human
hybrids and chimeras are in any case likely to be of limited scientific
value, due to the abnormal nature of their cells. They are unlikely
to provide any treatments for patients, in view of the medical
risks which they carry: risks not limited to the transmission
of animal viruses to humans. It should be remembered that mitochondrial
problems are a key factor in many neurodegenerative diseases;
there would also be particular risks if hybrid cells were used
to treat heart or liver complaints, for which cloning has been
proposed as a solution.[39]
Rather than pursue such a clinical dead-end, there should be further
investment in adult stem cell research, which is morally acceptable
to the vast majority of patients and clinicians worldwide, and
has already produced treatments for 72 conditions to date.[40]
12. We would urge that the creation of animal-human
hybrids and chimeras be prohibited not merely for the time being
(as the Government's White Paper proposes) but for the foreseeable
future. The importation of hybrids and chimeras from abroad should
also be prohibited, as should any commercialization of these or
other human (or potentially human) embryos. Such prohibitions
are well within the proper scope of law, given the importance
of the values—respect for human life and human parenthood—which
they would acknowledge and protect. Any scientific or commercial
gains from hybrids or chimeras are likely to be of small importance;
not so the massive offence to human dignity any such research
would display.
January 2007
34 For reflection on what would identify an embryo
as human, see H Watt, "Embryos and Pseudoembryos: Parthenotes,
Reprogrammed Oocytes and Headless Clones", forthcoming in
the Journal of Medical Ethics (available online at http://jme.bmj.com/preprint/watt.pdf) Back
35
We are referring here to cloned human embryos created precisely
in order to have a genetic disability which can then be studied
in their cells. Of course, cloning itself creates serious genetic
abnormalities, which again poses questions about the usefulness
for treatment or research of cells derived from clones-even those
with no animal components. Back
36
Thus the White Paper on Review of the Human Fertilisation and
Embryology Act refers at 9.31 to "[o] ther human-animal cell
fusion products" (the implication being that hybrid or chimera
embryos are themselves products, depite their putative humanity). Back
37
The nucleus provider is likely to feel a sense of ownership,
not parental responsibility, over the cloned embryo, who may be
perceived as a mere product of his or her cells. Back
38
We are not objecting to the addition of insignificant amounts
of human genetic material to some non-human organism. In such
a case-unlike a case where human sperm or a human nucleus is used
to "fertilise" an animal ovum-it cannot be said that
the human material is substituting for animal gametes. Such interventions
therefore seem sufficiently removed from human procreation to
be ethically acceptable-always assuming the human genetic material
comes from an ethical (in practice, non-embryonic) source, and
will make only a minor contribution to the animal to which it
is transferred. Back
39
Scottish Council on Human Bioethics, "Embryonic, Fetal
and Postnatal Animal-Human Mixtures: An Ethical Discussion",
7.2. Back
40
For constantly-updated information on existing adult stem cell
treatments, see www.stemcellresaerch.org Back
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