Cardinal accuses parliament of passing a 'nazi' consent amendment to new embryo bill

The leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland has incited a political row with the UK Parliament by condemning parts of the new embryo research bill as morally equivalent to Nazi atrocities in an open letter of protest to Prime Minister Gordon Brown. A number of MPs quickly retaliated and denounced the use of such inflammatory language as unhelpfully polarising and misinforming public debate.

Cardinal Keith O'Brien has been one of the most vociferous critics of the proposed Human Fertilisation & Embryology (HFE) Bill which seeks to update the preceding 1990 Act inline with current social attitudes and new research techniques. The Bill, already approved by the House of Commons the previous week, was approved by the House of Lords last Wednesday.

The Cardinal's letter was released the eve of the Lords' debate. In it he singled out a Government amendment in Schedule 3 of the Bill which he alleged had been added in 'stealth' after the main parliamentary debates. The amendment creates exceptions to the requirement for a patient's explicit written consent to the donation of tissue and cells for embryo and gamete research by children, mentally incapacitated adults and for untraceable donors. Cardinal O'Brien warned that removing tissue without specific patient consent in order to create animal-human admixed embryos or artificial gametes would breach '50 years of ethical medical research'. He lambasted the measure as 'flying in the face' of consent good-practice professional guidance as well as domestic and international laws, allowing 'utterly horrifying' procedures that set a 'nightmarish precedent' and permit behaviour not seen since 'under the Nazis'. He implored Brown to amend Schedule 3 'as a matter of great urgency and human decency'.

A committee of 17 cross-party MPs approved the measure proposed by public health minister Dawn Primarolo earlier this year. The Department of Health said that it was included to remedy concerns raised during the debates about the impracticalities of obtaining the required consent in these limited circumstances which it views are proportionate exceptions to the European Convention of Human Rights' protection of a patient's right to informed consent.

However, a number of medical ethicists and legal advisors also expressed concerns regarding this measure and its potential transgression of fundamental ethical principles and laws. Most felt that the Government had not allotted sufficient time to deliberate its implications. Many of their written statements were heard by the Lords at last week's debate. A measure to amend Schedule 3 accordingly was tabled and rejected.

Lord Winston dismissed the Nazi comments as unacceptable. Catholic Labour MP Jim Sheridan, accused the Church of 'scaremongering' and called for a more measured approach. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, lent support to having these moral concerns but not the choice of language. Cardinal O'Brien admitted to using incendiary remarks to attract public attention to the matter.

Despite criticism, Schedule 3 remains intact and creates three exceptions to allow a caretaker, or if no caretaker exists then a relevant person designated by a researcher, to consent on behalf of a child who is legally unable to consent or a mentally incapacitated adult who suffers from a disorder that scientists wish to research, such as Alzheimer's, and the researchers reasonably believe that they could not conduct this research alternatively through cells from another consenting patient. Consent is also to be presumed for samples already donated but the donor is no longer able to be traced (perhaps because the research was anonymised or due to changed residency).

Ultimately, the provision requires the researcher to provide evidence to the Human Fertilisation & Embryology Authority (HFEA) that a variety of conditions are satisfied before the authority will deem the consent acceptable and licence the research. The safeguards were modelled after those in the Mental Capacity Act 2005.