This week, a couple of developments threw much light on the current discussions of embryo freezing. Dr Etienne Grech, a Labour MP and medical doctor, wrote an article in a local paper containing several scientific and ethical inaccuracies. Not all that is scientifically possible should be ethically carried out! Just because embryo freezing can be an option in some cases, it should not be accessed if there are serious ethical issues, especially if there is an equally viable option and success rate with egg vitrification or freezing. The issue of freezing human life with its attendant destruction is a very serious issue which should trump other considerations. However, the cherry on the cake was his argument that since nature wastes a number of embryos during the normal process of fertilization and implantation (the uterus does not keep all embryos as some may be defective or there may be hormonal issues), then it does not matter if we similarly waste embryos ourselves by freezing them or frivolously letting them die. We are not responsible for nature, but we are responsible for our own acts! We should not produce eggs and then destroy them! If one had to use that analogy, I could ethically be able to kill a few people here and there because eventually nature wastes us all. We are all destined to die eventually. That does not absolve me from my responsibility. I am not responsible for what nature does. I am responsible for what I do!
The second development reported this week was that Labour MP Deborah Schembri has declared that she will not be voting in favour of embryo freezing in Parliament together with Dr Marlene Pullicino. Now Dr Schembri is not your ordinary MP. She has a Masters degree in Bioethics besides a degree in Law and the current government has appointed her Chairman of the Bioethics Consultative Committee (BCC). Now if a chairperson of a government board appointed by this very government, who is also an expert in a particular field, is flagging the government and challenging it to its own reasoning, there is a substantial issue here! It would be interesting to know what opinion and reasoning the BCC holds on this matter! Has it been consulted on the issue? What are the positions of the other members? Who are the other members? I think the press is actually missing an important connection here which should be investigated!
On the other hand, could it be that the truth of the facts formulating the government’s opinion might be a wee bit jarring with people’s common sense opinions, with what we refer to as prudence? Could it be that there are hidden issues the government does not want surfacing? Could it be that the government has its ethics upside down? Could it be that somewhere, or with somebody, there is money or vested interests involved? These scientific issues should not be settled by verbatim declarations of the Prime Minister or Ministers. There has to be a proper public discussion and the bare facts have to be produced for public discussion to take place. The penumbra is there for all to see. The issue of allowing homosexual couples access to IVF does not need the bringing in of embryo freezing although there are other ethical issues involved here, so where’s the beef? The lower risk of multiple pregnancies or other attendant ethical issues the government may talk about is taken care of by the number of embryo transfers allowed by the current law. My real fear, after hearing the opinion of Parliamentary Secretary Chris Fearne, is that the government has possibly been conned into allowing the selection of human embryos so as to lower the possibility of aneuploid embryos (e.g. Down’s syndrome) being transferred and eventually being born. This of course could possibly make some practitioners of IVF happier as the parents become more visibly content with perfection.
The idea of having a perfect baby of course appeals to many people, but few know that no babies are perfect as we all contain at least five genetic deletions when we are conceived, and many times even more than that. If we allow the selection of human beings during IVF procedure by pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PIGD) or otherwise, we will in fact open up the flood gates of eugenesis in our country. Eugenic selection is the antithesis of humanist, deist and Christian care and simply gives credence to the belief that some humans are better than others because of their physical characteristics. It would devalue the lives of aneuploidy human persons now alive, as the message given them would be that they are less valued as human persons. We would also be placing ourselves above the rest of society (and God) by choosing who should live and who should die after having produced these same human beings by our modern technologies. It is a form of idolatry at its best. We should not produce human beings and then kill them off or freeze them or let them die because they are not up to our puerile standards of perfection or because nature does the same! The proposed changes by the government would go a long way to making human life a social commodity and this would ultimately prepare the road for other legislation where the dignity of human beings is undervalued and human beings arbitrarily disposed of and thrown away for perceived physical and other defects or even on a whim! What would we think of ourselves if we were to be considered one of these lesser mortals? I am sure that the Stoics of old would have something to say about this as we slowly return to the moral barbarities of the pre-Christian Roman and Greek periods, where human life was worth very little if you happened to be born on the wrong side of the fence such as being a woman, a child or a slave or having some physical or mental condition.
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