Stem Cell Research

All-Party Parliamentary Pro-life Group Briefing on the Report of the House of Lords Select Committee on Stem Cell Research.

Debate: 5^th December 2002.

The Select Committee has failed to fulfil its remit.
The Report represents bad ethics and is philosophically flawed.
The Report is wholly inadequate in its scientific analysis.
The Report naively expresses confidence in the HFEA as an adequate regulator.
The Report leaves the United Kingdom isolated internationally.

1. The Committee has failed to fulfil its remit.

Prior to the establishment of the Select Committee, the All-Party Parliamentary Pro-life Group (APPPLG) questioned the wisdom of appointing a retrospective Select Committee to look into cloning and stem cell research after Parliament had approved hastily prepared and ill-conceived Regulations authorising such research.

Baroness Warnock maintained that Peers had been “bullied and pushed to do things more quickly than we should”. (Hansard; 22.01.01 Col. 45) Baroness Thatcher and other supporters of embryo research voted against the Regulations.

The Committee’s remit was to “examine the ethical, legal, scientific, medical and commercial issues surrounding the Regulations” approved by Parliament in January 2001 authorising embryonic stem cell research and so-called “therapeutic” cloning.

It failed to do this:

All 26 witnesses who were invited to appear before the Committee to give evidence from a scientific or medical perspective were from the pro-‘therapeutic’ cloning, pro-embryonic stem cell lobby.
No scientists were called to submit oral evidence from an exclusively adult stem cell perspective.
No scientists, ethicists or regulators from abroad were called to submit oral evidence. Contrast this with the President’s Council on Bioethics in the US which recently received oral submissions from Suzi Leather, Chair of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) and Baroness Kennedy QC, Chair of the Human Genetics Commission.
The Committee received no oral evidence from a legal perspective, despite the very serious significance of the ongoing legal issues raised by the Judicial Review of the ProLife Alliance and despite the fact that major legislative concerns were aired during the January debate by various speakers including the former Attorney General, Lord Rawlinson of Ewell QC and Lord Brennan QC.
Christian religions outside the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church were not invited to submit oral evidence. Input from the Muslim community was minimal and there were no witnesses from the Sikh or Hindu communities.

2. The Report represents bad ethics and is philosophically flawed.

The APPPLG maintains that human embryos are nascent human beings and that all destructive research on human embryos, regardless of the potential benefits, is unethical. We remain profoundly concerned about the effect on society of our treating nascent human life as a natural resource to be mined, exploited and commodified.

“We are desensitized and denatured by a coarsening of sensibility that comes to regard these practices as natural, ordinary and fully unproblematic. People who can hold nascent human life in their hands unblinkingly and without awe have deadened something in their souls.” - Professor Leon Kass, Chair of the US President’s Council on Bioethics.

We recognise that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 allows embryos to be created for research purposes and that we already accord an inferior value to the human embryo in its first 14 days of life.

However, we hoped that the Committee might have felt it appropriate to hear substantive oral evidence from those who share our analysis of the ethical status of the human embryo.

The significance of conception as the starting point of our human existence is illustrated by an article in ‘Nature’ magazine (see attached) dated 4^th July 2002. Headed, ‘Your destiny, from day one’ the article states, “Your world was shaped in the first 24 hours after conception. Where your head and feet would sprout, and which side would form your back and which your belly, were being defined in the minutes and hours after sperm and egg united.”

· The report makes no reference to an unprecedented written submission by an ad hoc group of eminent Christian theologians from the Anglican, Catholic, Orthodox and Reformed traditions on the ethical status of the human embryo. There is far more unanimity within the Christian tradition on sanctity of early human life than the Committee and its Chairman have led us to believe.

· The chapter in the report on ‘The Status of the Early Embryo’ appears after, rather than before, the conclusion that additional destructive embryo research should be permitted.

The Committee’s failure to effectively analyse the ethical issues surrounding embryo experimentation reinforces the perception that the issues had been determined and that tricky ethical questions would not be allowed to frustrate matters.

3. The Report is wholly inadequate in its scientific analysis.

It inexplicably ignores or obscures the peer reviewed evidence provided on adult stem cells, and bases its opinions and conclusions on the current state and future potential of adult stem cell research on very outdated and inaccurate evidence. The report is already past its sell by date. In July this year ‘Nature’ magazine reported groundbreaking research by Dr Catherine Verfaillie and colleagues at the University of Minnesota. This research showed that bone marrow contains highly malleable stem cells which can be converted into all tissue types.

Look at what the scientists are saying:

“Like stuck records, ministers and policy makers continue to enthuse about therapeutic cloning even though the majority of bench scientists no longer think it’s possible or practicable to treat patients with cells derived from cloned embryos. They have already moved on to investigating the alternatives.” ‘New Scientist’ Editorial – December 2001.

The report implies that no clinical or pre-clinical trials have been carried out with adult stem cells, despite the clear evidence provided from peer-reviewed journals of success in trials using adult stem cells in diabetes, severed spinal cord, demyelinated spinal cord, heart attack, stroke, traumatic brain injury, liver failure, Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s Disease, various forms of blindness, full-thickness burns, severe bone disease, and so on.
The report ignores the known serious risks of tumour and cancer formation using embryonic stem cells and, despite all the available evidence and clear warnings from a number of witnesses, claims that embryonic stem cells are safe.
The report obscures both the advances in adult stem cell research and the specific dangers and disadvantages of embryonic stem cells by ascribing specific, unique and profound advantages of adult stem cells also to embryonic stem cells, and ascribing the serious risks and disadvantages of embryonic stem cells also to adult stem cells.
In the attempt to ignore the dangers of embryonic stem cells and to attribute the advantages of adult stem cells to embryonic stem cells, the report commends a procedure that would instantly result in tumour formation with embryonic stem cells, despite having received clear warnings of this.

4. The Report naively expresses confidence in the HFEA as an adequate regulator.

Despite the fact that the HFEA is an organisation in disarray, the report entrusts regulation of embryonic stem cell research to this organisation.

In July this year the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee was highly critical of the HFEA in its report, “Developments in Human Genetics and Embryology:

“The Lords Stem Cell Research Committee reported that the HFEA’s is ‘highly regarded, both at home and abroad….. [and] has the full confidence of the scientific and medical research community’. We are unclear on what evidence it based this assertion.”

Recent ‘mix-up’ scandals at IVF clinics that the HFEA is supposed to be monitoring, and the shocking disclosures from the embryologist Dr Sammy Lee (Sunday Telegraph; 10.11.02 ) demonstrate that the criticisms of the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee are certainly not unfounded.

The report overlooks the fact that stem cell technology and human cloning are not extensions of assisted reproduction, but involve a multitude of scientific and medical fields which embrace nearly all aspects of disease. We need a new and completely independent organisation to monitor and assess developments in this field.

5. The Report leaves the United Kingdom isolated internationally.

Article 18 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine prohibits the creation of embryos for research purposes.
The European Union has adopted a one-year moratorium on research with supernumerary embryos from IVF cycles and on human embryonic stem cells.
The European Parliament has voted for a complete ban on all forms of cloning.
In the US, the majority of the President’s Council of Bioethics recommended a ban on cloning-to-produce-children combined with a four-year moratorium on cloning-for-biomedical-research. Their conclusions are endorsed by the current US administration.
In Germany destructive embryo research is prohibited.

Conclusion

The APPPLG recognises the impossibility of reclaiming, at present, absolute status for the embryo. However, this does not excuse the inadequate consideration afforded to this vital issue by the Committee.

The scientific analysis of stem cell research is deeply flawed and misleading, particularly in its assessment of adult stem cell research. In the absence of unanimity on the ethical status of the human embryo there is a broad consensus that destructive embryo research should not be permitted if there is a viable scientific alternative.

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: “the 1990 Act already provides the answer to the question of what happens if and when research into adult cells overtakes research using embryos: embryonic research would have to stop because the use of embryos would no longer be necessary for that research.” (Hansard; 22.01.01 Col. 120)

Adult stem cell research is a viable scientific alternative. Unlike embryonic stem cell research it is delivering results, not merely demonstrating potential. As a result, 3 out of every four dollars of private investment in the US are going into adult stem cell research and technology. Embryonic stem cell research companies are struggling to survive.

Since the passage of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990, 925,747 embryos have been created through IVF treatment. Of these 294,584 embryos remained unused, including those considered non-viable for implantation, and were therefore destroyed.

If the ‘special status’ of the embryo as coined by the Warnock Committee stands for anything then we should devote our resources exclusively to adult stem cell research. The report’s failure to acknowledge this constitutes its biggest failing.

For Further Information Please Contact: Martin Foley, Clerk to the All-Party Parliamentary Pro-life Group

0207 219 0968 or email; foleym@parliament.uk