Baroness Mary Warnock, whom I became acquainted with in her later years when we overlapped in the House of Lords, was not a very pleasant woman. This may have been because, for a woman to succeed in the important fields in which she moved, toughness and imperviousness to slights were a prerequisite, traits which in a man would be called decisiveness and firmness.
Her autobiography struck me in two odd ways. One was the utter assurance that permeated it. Nothing stood in her way, she moved without hesitation or obstacle from marriage to motherhood and home ownership. One paragraph ends with meeting and marrying Geoffrey, in the next they are ensconced in a big house in Oxford with children and ample household help; from don to headmistress, from philosopher to practical aide to governments.
And she was a snob in the way that only Oxford University denizens can be, a believer in the aristocracy of intellect and the inferiority of almost anything else. Although she described herself as a conservative, there were some nasty, almost amusingly so, comments about Margaret Thatcher in her book, pertaining to Thatcher's makeup and dress code as an undergraduate. Was there an element of jealousy of someone pursuing an alternative ambition?
Mary moved in three overlapping circles with great success. Oxford women philosophers – it was a golden age of striking and influential women – who coincided. Vera Brittain, Iris Murdoch, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgeley, Elizabeth Anscombe, Barbara Castle, Shirley Williams, Jenifer Hart. All unconventional in different ways, with those traits that many men dislike in women. Mary has a claim to be the most long lastingly influential of them all. I like to think that is because she put her philosophy to practical use in a way that perhaps unforseeably is going to affect the world for decades to come, perhaps for ever.
Her male philosopher contemporaries, well-known names, seemed to concentrate on language and – philistine that I am – have left no mark on the conduct of everyday affairs. Mary wrought practical philosophy and the now common acceptance of regulation of a profession by a body that included non-professionals, ironically a practice favoured by Thatcher.
By the time I overlapped with Mary in the Lords, it was the early 21st century. We seemed to disagree over the Diane Blood case (see BioNews 924) and a scandal of missing embryos, unfortunately similar to one of recent weeks. She had a way of changing her mind, giving out opinions quite contrary to ones she had expressed earlier in life, and her views were always influential.
I have a copy of a letter I wrote to her 24 years ago asking her not to complain that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) was overstretched, which it was not, and not to call for yet another inquiry into the regulation of therapeutic cloning.
I think by then she was not wholly up to date on all the practical issues in fertility regulation and she did not get involved with the HFEA, unlike the great Dame Anne McLaren, who sat with Mary on the Warnock Committee. McLaren also joined the HFEA and was the author of the Authority's work on therapeutic cloning which, following the birth of Dolly the Sheep (see BioNews 1131), persuaded the government that there was much to be gained from therapeutic cloning as long as human cloning was banned.
From the moment of the Report bearing her name in 1984 to the time of the HFEA Act, Mary's influence in Parliament was beneficial and marked. Out of Parliament she publicised IVF in popular journalism for the benefit of the public, especially women.
As she said, people wanted there to be some lines that should not be crossed, in order that regulation could be seen to be working and to keep ethical order. That applied to the 14-day embryo rule, still very important, and to the power given to the HFEA to license new procedures. By creating a consensus, or at least a situation that most people could live with and understand, the ground was laid by Mary for more than 30 years of steady and uncontested widening and progress, from IVF to research, from preimplantation genetic diagnosis to cloning, without any public concern or at least none sufficient to count.
The House of Lords has remained more liberal on this score than the Commons, because Mary planted there the notion of public benefit as a determinant in reproductive science, whereas MPs feel beholden in some cases to the more conservative of their constituents. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 had an easier passage there than in the Commons. Mary pioneered the comprehensible account of technical issues, in a way that even I, without a scientific O-Level to my name, could handle, discretionary boundaries in the law, and she threw her weight behind consultation.
From the moment of her Report, Mary's views prevailed in the Lords. In 1988, debating her Report, another equally influential figure, Lord Denning, opined that insemination with donor sperm should be confined to stable, long-married couples; how out of date that now seems. So she opposed in the 1980s debates those, who on the basis of faith, held that embryos should be protected from the moment of fertilisation, contrasting this with the great good that could flow from embryo research and invoking the 17th century opposition to Galileo and Descartes.
She explained the difference between a pre-embryo and one that had reached the stage of the primitive streak. She waved away the slippery slope of fear by emphasising the importance of statutory regulation and consent, and she quite rightly predicted that the UK model would be influential all over the world and be copied. 'We cannot undo the enlightenment' she said. We cannot refuse to help people with research, that would be contrary to religion and humanity. She opposed Enoch Powell's attempt to ban all embryo research.
She successfully opposed the setting up of a new National Human Bioethics Commission, which was likely to be more religiously and conservatively focused. She emphasised the rule of law and the ability of Parliament to set up select committees to look at difficult issues, those being more likely to reach consensus than individual politicians or commission members. She constantly appealed to the wisdom and legitimacy of Parliamentary determination in this field and that of course went down very well. She stressed the positive moral imperative upon government to allow research to continue, be funded and lightly regulated. She backed the retention of the need for a father and welfare of the child sections, as I did, on the ground that they did no harm. She urged quick regulation of stem cell research and hybrid embryos, and compared the UK favourably to the US prohibitions.
She spoke frequently about the benefits of knowing who the sperm donor was, the changed attitude towards donors and the difference from adoption disclosure. She repeatedly called in debate for not deceiving a child about the circumstances of his birth, and how it was morally wrong to pretend parenthood. She explained that she saw no moral objection to creating embryos for research and that the term 'respect' for the embryo meant that it should not be used frivolously, even though, as she said, it might end up being thrown down the sink. She criticised the practice of giving free IVF treatment to women who donated all their eggs, shocking and exploitative she called it. She was also perhaps the original quango queen and an established member of the Great and the Good, to the benefit of all of us.
The next free-to-attend online events from PET will be:
- 40 Years of Egg Donation and Counting: What Have We Learned? What Happens Next?, taking place online this coming Wednesday (24 April 2024) – register here.
- 10 Families and Counting: Time for Global Limits on Donor-Created (Half-) Siblings?, taking place online on Wednesday 22 May 2024 – register here.
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