Since 1990 it has been legal to use human embryos for research. Research is conducted on unborn children who have died by abortion or miscarriage, or on IVF or cloned embryos of less than 14 days’ development¹. Most of the IVF embryos used for research have been left over from fertility treatment but some are produced specifically for research².

When IVF treatment began in 1978 legislation was required to control what could be done with human embryos produced in test tubes. The government set up the Warnock committee to investigate IVF and embryo research, and to make recommendations for legislation.

The Warnock committee first decided when they thought human life began. This suggests that they thought killing or experimenting on human beings was wrong. A textbook used widely in medical schools states: "Human development is a continuous process that begins when an ovum from a female is fertilised by a sperm from a male... a zygote is the beginning of new human life"³. Biological fact tells us that life begins at conception.

The Warnock committee claimed that the beginning of human life was an ethical rather than a biological question. They decided that embryos could be experimented upon until they were 14 days old, a day before the appearance of the embryos’ primitive streak (what becomes the spine).

However, the committee recognised that the embryo was no less human before 14 days than after, "...once the process has begun, there is no particular part of the developmental process that is more important than another; all are part of a continuous process... Thus biologically, there is no one single identifiable stage in the development of the embryo beyond which the in vitro embryo should not be kept alive. However we agreed that this was an area in which some precise decision must be taken, in order to allay public anxiety."⁴

Embryo research violates a fundamental principle of medical ethics as in the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Helsinki⁵. However, many researchers claimed that the research would bring benefits and that medical ethics had moved on. Dr Peter Braude of the Fertilisation Unit of the Rose Maternity Hospital, Cambridge, commented: "The Helsinki agreement was drawn up long before embryo research began, and thinking has not yet caught up with it"⁶.

The Warnock committee’s report of 1984 and the 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act made the committee’s recommendations law. Dr John Habgood, the archbishop of York, spoke in favour of embryo research during the bill’s debate in the House of Lords. He argued that an embryo develops into a human being gradually: "... individual lives... begin with chemistry and they reach their fulfilment in mystery..."⁷. However, gradualism disagrees with biology and even the opinion of the Warnock committee.

Stem cell technology is now the main issue in the debate on embryo experimentation. Stem cells are cells that develop into specialised cells such as skin, muscle and nerves. Embryonic stem cells can develop into many types of specialised cells⁸. Scientists claim that embryonic stem cells could be used to produce new body tissue and even whole organs for transplant, as well as to develop and test new drugs and improve understanding of human development and cancer⁹. However, this research requires taking stem cells from an embryo, which causes his or her death¹⁰.

1 Ann McLaren, the English geneticist who established the concept that the human embryo should not be accorded any recognition as a person until 14 days after fertilisation, has written an essay expressing her regret at inventing such a morally and biologically arbitrary distinction. Source: Fr Angelo Serra, reported by Zenit news agency, 31 October 2000
2 American scientists have begun creating embryos solely for research. The Eastern Virginia Medical School recruited sperm and egg donors who knew that the resulting embryos would not be implanted in the womb. Until now, such research in America has only been done on embryos left over after in vitro fertilisation. [Reuters, via Yahoo! News, 11 July 2001]
3The Developing Human, K L Moore, W B Saunders, 1988, page 1
4 The Warnock Committee, Report of the Committee of Inquiry into Human Fertilisation and Embryology, London (1984), HMSO, p.60
5 The World Medical Association’s Declaration of Helsinki (revised 1975) stated: "In research on man, the interests of science and society should never take precedence over considerations related to the well-being of the subject ... The doctor can combine medical research with professional care, the objective being the acquisition of medical knowledge, only to the extent that medical research is justified by its diagnostic and therapeutic value for the patient."
6 A similarity has been observed between Dr Braude’s comments with respect to the Helsinki Declaration, and comments by Dr Karl Brandt, Hitler’s physician, with respect to the Hippocratic Oath. Dr Brandt, on trial at Nuremberg, said in 1946: "I am convinced that if Hippocrates were alive today he would change the wording of his oath ... I have a perfectly clear conscience about the part I have played in the affair."
7 House of Lords Hansard, col.1020, 7 December 1989
8 They are thus described as pluripotent.
9 US National Institutes of Health fact sheet on human pluripotent stem cell research guidelines, updated January 2001
10 See sections 1.3.5 on so-called ethical alternatives.

'A Way of Life' The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children March 2002

Copyright © 2002-2008 The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children. All Rights Reserved. Tel: 0141 221 2094. E-mail: Web Design & Development by CSS Web Design