Legal experts and judges are constantly being called to pass judgements on highly scientific and biomedical issues when they do not have the basic scientific knowledge to deal with the subject matter. The recent judgement by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg (Council of Europe not EU institution) that the human embryo is a constituent part of the mother's identity is a significant case in point.
What every schoolchild studying 'O' level biology will tell anyone worth his salt, is that in the process of reproduction there is a process of complete shuffling of genes in a DNA molecule of the constituent person's gametes (ova in female or sperm in male). This complete reshuffling of genetic material including splicing of genes (translocation) results in large numbers of gametes produced that are completely different from each other and from the parents' actual DNA, so that the DNA of any individual's gametes are completely different from his or her own DNA. This process is called meiosis and is an evolutionary process of sexual reproduction allowing for physical variation in the same species. Man is not a simple amoeba!
Furthermore, when the process of fertilisation takes place, any of the millions of sperm with different DNA can fertilise any of the thousands of ova with different DNA; therefore the genetic constitution of the resulting embryo is a completely new and singular DNA that never existed before. This DNA then controls the embryo's development along new singular instructions that are completely independent of the mother or father. So much so that when IVF is carried out, the early embryo develops in the test tube independently of the mother!
It was good that there was a minority of five judges out of the 17 who disagreed with this opinion, including Malta' Judge Vincent Degaetano to his credit, but the resulting judgement does not do credit to the judges' knowledge of elementary biology. The issue of when human life begins was settled by embryologists long ago. The new independent human being with an intrinsically active potential to develop a new singular DNA singularly begins with fertilisation! There is here a biological paradigm shift! I cannot imagine a legal judgement countering this scientific fact being laid down, ultimately creating new legal rights based on a myth. This will result in chaos and a lack of protection for human beings, which is what politicians and the courts are primarily there to prevent. These are not subjective opinions as there is an objective scientific body of evidence to back things up. However, I suppose that people always see what they want to see as it suits them! The funny thing is that the court did not even find for the plaintiff but gave Italy the right to stop the mother Adelina Parrillo from donating the embryos obtained from an IVF process, for scientific research.
This whole scenario can be avoided if ovum freezing is employed instead of embryo freezing! The success rates for fertilisation are the same and the mother does not need to undergo hyperstimilation and retrieval of eggs again because a surplus of eggs is there; frozen and can be used whenever needed. There is no single advantage of egg freezing, carried out properly, over embryo freezing! This is just one of the court cases which exist between divorced or separated partners battling for their frozen embryos and also between them and the State, when they want to use their embryos for unethical ends like research or donation for surrogacy for example.
This is just one case that should dissuade our government from capriciously going over to frozen embryo use during IVF rather than the use of frozen eggs or ova. Among other problems, someone ultimately has to take a decision about what to do with the frozen embryos left over! A serious and ideologically unbiased government should rely on better scientific and ethical advice on this subject than that of advisers not versed in the subject, or those who stand to profit from it, or from political groupings like Nisa Laburisti who in their press release simply appear to be speaking from their derriere.
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