Last week, some enlightening information was given, following a written parliamentary question to the Health Minister in the Northern Ireland Legislative Assembly. Northern Ireland (NI), politically, falls under the jurisdiction of Britain but has its own elected self-governing Assembly. It has a legal personality quite distinct from that of the Republic of Ireland (South). The question put by MLA Jim Allister enquired how many human embryos had been destroyed in NI since 2006. The answer by NI Health Minister Edwin Poots was as enlightening as it was troubling. More than 4,000 embryos had been destroyed in Northern Ireland alone since 2006, that is, over five years! In 2006 the figure was just one embryo, in 2007 the figure rose to 74, in 2008 it rose to a massive 1,151, in 2009 it went down to 916, in 2010 again down to 811 and finally in 2011 it rose significantly again to more than 1,207 (provisionally). Quite an exponential rise! The main reasons that these were allowed to perish after being produced in the laboratory were three. First, that the quality of the embryos after eugenic selection was poor, and therefore not suitable for transfer, second, the legal consent period for cryopreservation had lapsed, or third, the couple withdrew their consent to storage (freezing).

Mr Poots also declared: “It should be noted that fertility issues are a reserved matter at Westminster (the National Parliament) and we are therefore legally bound by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology (HFEA) Act 1990 (amended by the 2008 Act) which provides legal instruction on creation, storage, consent and use of embryos outside the human body and storage and use of gametes to create embryos.” In a nutshell, the principle of subsidiarity was not extended by Westminster to the NI Assembly on issues of fertilisation and assisted reproductive technology. It is to be noted, that the basis of the above mentioned Act stands squarely on the reputable (if not notorious) report (Warnock Report 1984) by the committee chaired by Baroness Mary Warnock, a known philosopher and writer on existentialism. This report had reached a number of weird conclusions including the one which stated that individual human life started 14 days after fertilisation! A conclusion that holds no scientific weight, as not one embryologist of repute could endorse it. Of course, once that benchmark was accepted by Westminster, this allowed many types of experimentation and destruction of human embryos, which were earlier than two weeks, to proceed unhindered and unobstructed.

Mr Allister himself noted, “A human embryo is, biologically, a living human being at the earliest stage of its development. Of course, it is dependent on the mother to nurture it and give it life but, genetically, it is a distinct organism, different from both the egg and the sperm from which it grew. It does, in effect, need nothing more than the nourishment of the mother to grow into a recognisable human being. Thus the destruction of a thousand embryos a year in Northern Ireland is a troubling issue.” Troubling indeed! The question is, ought we to establish here in Malta best practice criteria in IVF, derived from the legal and practical experiences on the same subject, as carried out in Britain?

Some other information released by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority this week, also shows that the number of single women (UK) using IVF rose from 350 in 2007 to 1,571 in 2010. The number of lesbian women receiving the treatment also increased from 148 to 417. The increase is due to new laws passed in the UK in 2008, which removed the need for a father to be present before fertility treatment was able to proceed. The HFEA itself had removed the requirement for clinics to consider the child’s need for a father before granting access to IVF, focusing instead on the need to show the availability of supportive parenting. This despite the fact, that 77 per cent of the British public were found to believe at the time that it was very important or important for a father to be considered for children resulting from IVF.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread!