Manipulators of the miracle of life

At a conference at the Newcastle Centre for Life recently a leading authority on human cloning addressed a Catholic audience about her work. The questions raised got to the heart of the ethical issues that divide scientists and theologians

The Newcastle Centre for Life, a complex that dominates several acres in the heart of the city, has, architecturally at least, a disarmingly playful air. The pastel colours and cute letters of its recurrent ?Life? logo might have been borrowed from a box of playdough; while the flowing contours of its buildings would not be out of place in a theme park. Indeed it would not come as much of a surprise to find Willy Wonka inside, sailing down chocolate rivers in candy boats with his oompa loompas.

Instead, what is going on there is, in the words of Kevin Dunn, Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle, ?science with profound implications for humanity and the uniqueness of every person?. That science involves the creation of human clones, that is, embryos identical in their genetic make-up to other human beings; intervention in and modification of the way these embryos develop, in the hope of achieving medical breakthroughs in the treatment of diseases that have resisted cure till now; and the destruction of these embryos, along with others that are the byproducts of the fertility work at the centre.

Different countries regulate this kind of work with varying degrees of strictness. South Korea takes a laissez-faire approach to human cloning, which has allowed it to become the world leader. However, the relatively light touch of the UK regulatory body, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), has enabled Britain to move ahead of the rest of the Western world, and keep South Korea in its sights.

Seeing work with such profound implications for humanity going on in his diocese, Bishop Dunn decided to engage with it. On Saturday, a conference entitled ?Catholic Perspectives on Human Cloning? took place at the Centre for Life, organised by the National Board of Catholic Women, the Newman Association, and the diocese. Making up the panel were the philosopher Professor John Haldane of the University of St Andrews (and recently appointed consultor of the Pontifical Council for Culture by Pope Benedict); the theologian Dr Tina Beattie of Roehampton University; the barrister and editor of Christian Law Review, John Duddington; and Professor Alison Murdoch, director of the fertility centre at the Centre for Life, and one of only two people in the country licensed to work in human cloning.

Professor Murdoch began her presentation by saying that she would only be making one biblical reference: now she knew how Daniel must have felt in the lions? den. But the audience was attentive and appreciative rather than hostile.

The fact that one in 6.5 marriages is ?unproductive? is what keeps her in business, she said. The older a woman gets, the poorer the quality of her eggs and the less fertile she becomes, so the fact that women are choosing to establish themselves in a career before they have children adds to the demand for the centre?s in vitro fertilisation services. In turn, however, her work ?gives access to cells that allow stem cell scientists to do the work they do?. These cells are embryos that are rejected during fertility treatment, rather than being implanted in the mother. It is these poorer quality embryos that are used in stem cell research.

Professor Murdoch explained the mechanics of this work. As the foetus is developing, some genes switch on to make one part of the body, others other parts. Stem cell biology is all about exploring the way genes are switched on and off. If we learn enough about this then we will be able to cure diabetes, for example, because we would be able to change the message in a gene and tell it: ?Don?t make skin, make pancreas?.

One of the main problems in this biology is the cells must be ?pure? ? we don?t want a foot growing in the pancreas ? and new tissue must be genetically matched or it will be rejected. Cloning, however, is a ?bad word? for this matching process, according to Professor Murdoch. ?We are reprogramming the nucleus,? she said, ?telling it ?don?t be what you want to be, but something else?.? If we could find other ways of making a cell ?blank?, then we would not have to use embryos.

Professor Murdoch made much of the fact that ?we are not talking babies here, we are talking clumps of cells?. She makes a distinction between her own work in therapeutic cloning, where clones are made with a view to medical applications, and reproductive cloning, in which identical foetuses are generated. She supports the ban on reproductive cloning because it is scientifically unsafe and presents far too many risks to the child. She also applies strict ethical guidelines to her ?therapeutic? work. She would never use an embryo in which neural tissue had started to appear, which occurs around 14 days, as this might indicate some sort of consciousness. In practice, she says, it is ?very difficult to grow an embryo for more than seven days?, and 14 days is ?beyond our reach even if we wanted to?. Professor Murdoch?s judgement on this 14-day deadline is also the judgement of the HFEA regulating body. ?I value knowing that I do have the backing of the state,? she said.

John Duddington tackled some of the terminological issues that enter the equation, suggesting that a less loaded term than ?cloning? might be ?therapeutic use of cell nuclear replacement?. He outlined the legal divergence across the world, and the ambiguous UN declaration that prohibits cloning ?insofar as it is incompatible with human dignity?. In Britain the foetus has no legal rights, but Mr Duddington welcomed the fact that the Human Reproductive Cloning Act of 2001 straightforwardly forbids the second and decisive step in cloning, the pla-cing of a cloned embryo in a woman?s uterus. The penalty for such a crime is up to 10 years in prison.

As far as Professor Haldane was concerned, the utilitarian approach that is so often employed in this field is inadequate. Emphasising the importance of the concept of demeanour ? how we carry ourselves through life ? he said that there are certain options we forgo simply because it would be demeaning to engage in them. Barbarism does not always come foaming at the mouth, and we should ask ourselves whether our societies are developing a ?highly manicured? form of barbarism.

Moreover, the drive behind cloning was part of an impulse towards control which, if successful, damaged an essential part of our nature. ?It is part of the human condition out of which nobility is achieved,? he said, ?that we live in a world not of our making, in circumstances not of our choosing?.

He ended by attacking Professor Murdoch?s ?morphological? argument that an embryo was not a human being if it was still a small collection of cells and had not started to develop human form. The cells of the blastocyst ? Professor Murdoch?s three-day old ?clump of cells? ? look exactly like a human being, he said, because that is what a human being looks like at that stage of development.

The case seemed to be made for many in the audience, but Tina Beattie took the ethical debate in a new direction. The theology of cloning and genetic engineering tends to revolve around whether one takes a view that human beings are stewards of Creation, or co-creators, she said. Following the Jesuit moral theologian Jack Mahoney, she suggested that Catholic reflection on Man as made in the image of God has led to understanding human beings as co-creators with God, not simply passive recipients of God?s creative action. Scientific endeavour to relieve disease, suffering and premature death that results from our genetic inheritance may be acceptably ?co-creative?, she suggested.

Dr Beattie argued there were ?better? arguments against embryo research than appeals to the status of the early embryo as a person. These were to do with the likelihood that such research would accentuate the vast socio-economic disparities that already exist around the globe, bringing benefits to some at the expense of others whose suffering we should have learned to prevent, while at the same time pandering to a culture that refuses to accept the kind of suffering that should be accepted. We need to discover the ways in which we are mothers, not masters, of Creation, she suggested, before we can make a proper ethical judgement of this work.

The key question still hung in the air at the end of the day. Was this jolly, chocolate factory-like centre really as bursting with life as it looked? The answer for some would be highly nuanced, for others a clear yes or no. But a clergyman next to me offered an intriguing conclusion. During the morning, looking at three pictures tracing the development of a human being from fertilised egg, to blastocyst, to recognisable human foetus, Professor Murdoch had remarked that she was ?always moved by this miracle?. ?Only one more thing is needful,? the clergyman commented.

He did not elaborate but I took him to mean that a sense of awe before the miracle of life is just a short step away from respect for the embryo as a human being. And perhaps he was suggesting that, while the Newcastle Centre may have life, it does not yet have it in abundance.