A few days ago I was invited to take part in a discussion on certain bioethical issues on Dr Andrew Azzopardi’s radio show on Radio Malta. One of the invited phone-ins was Parliamentary Secretary for Health Dr Chris Fearne. Someone asked him why the government wanted to start embryo freezing during the IVF process when egg (ova) freezing was just as efficient and without the ethical ramifications of freezing a parallel humanity and killing off several embryos in the process. I was, to say the least, taken aback by his answer.
He stated the reason (at least one of them) that the present government wanted to start to freeze human embryos was because it was given advice (by certain IVF practitioners?) that in cases of aneuploidy, there could be a selection of the embryos and only the good embryos with a proper genetic complement would be transferred to the female uterus or womb! Aneuploidy is any deviation from an exact multiple of the haploid number [23 from each biological parent] of chromosomes, whether fewer or more. A human complement is therefore normally 46 chromosomes. Aneuploid human beings include persons with Down’s syndrome (47 chromosomes), Turner’s syndrome (45 chromosomes), Klinefelter’s syndrome (47 chromosomes) and several others. What about the aneuploid embryos? Are these to remain permanently frozen or left to die? In my book, this is called the selection of human beings according to their genetic characteristics. This would in effect mean that any embryos with Down’s syndrome and any other not containing 46 chromosomes would be rejected and frozen or left to die! This is eugenics at its best. Eugenics is the selection of human beings according to their physical characteristics, something like what the Nazis did with blue-eyed children in World War II!
This is atrocious and should be resisted at all costs. The present IVF law forbids this selection of human beings on the principle that all human beings should have the same right to life irrespective of what chromosomes they have. Consequently, it insists that all fertilised embryos must be transferred to the mother’s womb without any selection of physical characteristics by the practitioners or the parents. It seems that this is one clause that is about to be changed. This week the Prime Minister visited the Church home Id-Dar tal-Providenza. Does not his position seem to be a simple vote-catching exercise when his actions with human embryos with the same physical conditions like many of those he visited there, are at variance with his camera-wise politicking? Of course human embryos do not vote! Maybe some of those living at the home and their parents do!
What also surprised me is that several members on the panel on the radio programme cast doubt on whether a human embryo is a really a human being from fertilisation or as they also call it, conception, that is when the sperm enters the ovum and starts the development process. Many in fact agreed with this sceptic approach even though I pointed out that this issue had been settled by the science of embryology many years ago. A human embryo has a full complement of chromosomes and is a self-moving or totipotent cell. If allowed to develop it grows into an adult human being not a skin or muscle cell! If it is not a human being, then what in heaven’s name is it? A member of the Humanist Society on the panel was quite sceptic about this and I thought it strange that a member of a humanist society should take such an inhuman position! So for those who foolishly do not pay attention to science, I am partially reproducing below, a European Court of Justice judgement given in Luxembourg on 18 October 2011 in Oliver Brüstle v Greenpeace e.V. (C-34/10). Mr Brüstle wanted to patent some totipotent cells removed from an embryo. This is illegal under EU law as it would amount to the ownership of human beings! In its sentence, the court found it fit to deny the patent and also legally define what a human embryo is.
“On examination of the concept of ‘human embryo’, the Court points out firstly that it is not called upon to broach questions of a medical or ethical nature, but must restrict itself to a legal interpretation of the relevant provisions of the Directive. Thus, the context and aim of the Directive show that the European Union legislature intended to exclude any possibility of patentability where respect for human dignity could thereby be affected. It follows, in the view of the Court, that the concept of ‘human embryo’ must be understood in a wide sense. Accordingly, the Court considers that any human ovum must, as soon as fertilised, be regarded as a ‘human embryo’ if that fertilisation is such as to commence the process of development of a human being. A non-fertilised human ovum into which the cell nucleus from a mature human cell has been transplanted (cloning – my clarification) and a non-fertilised human ovum whose division and further development have been stimulated by parthenogenesis (starting fertilization by passing an electric discharge or chemical stimulus through a female egg – my clarification) must also be classified as a ‘human embryo’. Although those organisms have not, strictly speaking, been the object of fertilisation, due to the effect of the technique used to obtain them, they are capable of commencing the process of development of a human being just as an embryo created by fertilisation of an ovum can do so.” There you have European law from the horse’s mouth!
According to this, it transpires that the present government’s moral compass seems to be broken or very weird. I have not heard what the government’s appointed Bioethics Consultative Committee has to say on all this. Its silence is glaringly obvious. Have they been consulted on this matter? I should remind the state that according to the ethical principles and values hierarchies put forward for social work practice by Loewenberg and Dolgoff, the following scale of values should be observed when there is any conflict of applied ethics. Therefore the first principles are superior to the following ones when there is a clash of values.
Principle of the protection of life.
Principle of equality and inequality.
Principle of autonomy and freedom.
Principle of least harm.
Principle of quality of life.
Principle of privacy and confidentiality.
Principle of truthfulness and full disclosure.
There are other scales of values but they always place the right to life of human beings at the very top! I therefore call on this government to seriously re-examine its intentions and motives in changing the present Embryo Protection Act which was enacted to safeguard human dignity when faced with technical interventions.
[email protected]