On March 13, in possibly one of the shoddiest legal judgements this country will ever read, the Lords ruled against the ProLife Alliance. Human cloning has now been formally legalised for the first time in the Western World, thanks to an interpretative stratagem, which completely bypasses the need for a parliamentary vote. Utilitarian science has won its greatest victory, thanks to the aggressive enthusiasm of spin-doctor Blair, the steam-rolling economic forces of the biotechnology industry, and facilitated by the frightening ignorance of the higher judiciary.
In essence the Law Lords ruled that when Parliament defined the embryo in the 1990 Act as 'a live human embryo where fertilisation is complete', the specific focus on fertilisation was of no particular significance. What was really intended by the Act, according to the retrospective clairvoyance of their Lordships, was that this definition should include not just the offspring of fertilisation but any kind of human embryo that mischievous science might ever wish to fabricate. Fertilisation, far from being a defining biological characteristic, should be viewed as a mere variation on a theme. Whether embryos are created asexually by cloning, or by the merging of two sperm (androgenesis), or by blocking the division of an egg (parthenogenesis), or by the merging of two egg cells, or whatever future miscreations embryologists might devise, thanks to this new interpretation of the 1990 Act, an all-embracing blessing will be offered to all.
Note how casually Lord Bingham of Cornhill dismisses the quantum leap difference between sexual and asexual reproduction: 'Parliament could not have intended to distinguish between live human embryos produced by fertilisation of a female egg and live embryos produced without such fertilisation, since Parliament was unaware that the latter alternative was physically possible.' (1)
This statement, seminal to Bingham's subsequent arguments, is complete rubbish, and had he done any homework he would have realised this. Some forms of mammalian cloning were very well known in 1990, a fact underlined repeatedly both during the hearing and in the kilos of written evidence. Parliament was therefore more than able to distinguish between embryos created by fertilisation or otherwise, and fertilisation was most certainly intended to be a defining characteristic. Not one of the five Judges registered this important historical fact.
The creation of embryos without fertilisation (by CNR - cell nuclear replacement) appears in the Warnock Report of 1984, as well as the White Paper and Parliamentary Debates which informed the subsequent Act. Parliament in 1990 knew everything it needed to know about cloning and obviously did not like the idea one little bit. Otherwise why did they make the cloning process, cell nuclear replacement, a criminal offence in section 3.3(d) of the Act? Parliament's clear intention was to ban human cloning. There is no other reasonable or logical interpretation of the Act.
The great American teacher, Professor Leon Kass, described cloning as 'a profound defilement of our given nature as procreative beings and of the social relations built on this natural ground'. Kass contrasts the loving coitus of the human couple with the asexual reproduction of bacteria and fungi, and the other lowly life forms to which the cloners would happily reduce man. Cloning is not a variation on a theme as the Law Lords would have us believe, no mere further extension of assisted reproduction, but a total disintegration and rewriting of our common anthropology, and the myriad cultural riches and traditions that stem from it.
Bruno Quintavalle is leader of ProLife Alliance
Sources and References
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1) Times Law Report
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