Embryo research – a moral outrage?

9:23am Tuesday 6th May 2008

AMORAL outrage is being perpetrated in this country and it seems that hardly anyone is interested.

Under legislation currently before Parliament, human embryos will be created for the sole purpose of being used in scientific experiments. These embryos will have no chance of growing and developing into normal life.

Some Roman Catholic bishops have protested.

But where are Anglican bishops on this issue? I have so far noticed only one, Tom Wright of Durham, put his head above the parapet and denounce this technique.

Actually, some Anglican bishops support embryo research and none more enthusiastically than the former Bishop of Oxford, Richard Harries.

Harries advocates experimentation on embryos and he even says that human cloning is "right and necessary". He says: "This fundamental research needs to be done before any progress can be made in finding any cure to the range of serious diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and others."

I must deal with the disingenuousness of Harries' statement. Such research is "right and necessary"

he says - and the Government agrees with him - because this science will lead to cures for serious diseases. The fact is that there has never been a single case of a human being cured of any disease by the use of human embryos. On the other hand, medical advances are being made in the use of adult stem cells, a process which does not result in ending the lives of these rudimentary human beings.

Harries' primary confusion leads him to make assertions which are truly bizarre. He further seeks to justify cloning on the grounds that, in any case, "There is in nature a very high level of embryo loss". This is an argument so absurd that it makes me want to repeat the protests of the tennis player John McEnroe to the umpire: "You can't be serious!" Harries says that because a lot of embryos die natural deaths, it's okay for us to go ahead and kill them. This is like saying that because some people die in traffic accidents it's all right for me to push my neighbour under a number 56 bus.

LET us turn to the morality of this issue.

Christian teaching since the first Century has declared: "You shall not kill the embryo."

In the Gospels no difference is made between the unborn child and the infant. When, in St Luke chapter one, verse 41, John the Baptist leaps in his mother's womb, the original Greek word for him is "brephos" - the same word used of the baby Jesus lying in the manger in chapter two, verse 12.

Supporters of embryo research tell us to grow up, listen to the science and learn sense. They declare that they are not experimenting on human beings but on almost infinitely tiny bits of cellular material. The embryo, they tell us "is not a person". I agree. But a two-weeks-old child is not really a person either. The word person refers to a mature being capable of advanced social interaction. A person is defined by his relationships with other persons.

There is no excuse for embryo research by saying that the embryo is not a person. It is certainly a human being and it will grow into a person.

All the potential for personhood is there in the embryo. And no human embryo has ever grown into anything other than a human person.

You shall not kill the embryo.

■ Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.

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