In 1941 during the dark days of the Second World War in a prophetic speech delivered in the House of Commons in the UK Sir Winston Churchill warned of a future “made more sinister and perhaps more protracted by the lights of perverted science”.

It is safe to assume that for many of the delegates at this Conference the sixty years since that speech represents more or less our lifetimes.  So, it is profoundly challenging that in our short lives Churchill’s grim warning has become a reality in a way, which even he could not have begun to imagine and especially in the field of bio technology.  Indeed, in those short sixty years the developments of this field of science have been faster, deeper and more far reaching than any other field.  The reason? – it has challenged humanity to face the question front on “What is man?”

I am extremely grateful to my friend and co-worker Rev Dr Nigel Cameron for his trenchant and illuminating summary of developments in bio-ethics.  He uses three words “take, make and fake”.    Let me explain these and use them as the framework on which to hang this short talk on this immensely challenging subject.

Let us start with ‘take’.  This is sometimes referred to as Bioethics I.  The continuing nightmare and challenges of abortion, euthanasia and infanticide.

It is a huge regret that it was the UK in 1967 which led the way in the non-communist world by legalising the termination of pregnancy for purely social reason.  This led rapidly to abortion becoming a worldwide phenomenon.  The attack on the beginning of life has been matched by the entirely logical resulting attack on the end of life, as well, euthanasia.  If it is acceptable to destroy a human being shortly after it begins, for social reasons, then exactly the same logic applies to ending it, for social reasons, at any stage thereafter. 

This is most starkly shown by the relentless social and media pressure to legalise euthanasia.  So here we have it : ‘taking’ life.

I have stressed the social element of  ‘taking’ life because it is quite clear that this has been a very significant driver for these revolutionary changes in medical practice.

It is not generally known that a survey of practising doctors in 1967 in the UK shared that a significant majority were against the new law. 

This is very important because although it is the medical profession which is most involved and affected by these procedures the social revolutionaries have succeeded in pushing through their agenda.  The reasons for this are instructive.  

A careful reading of the Parliamentary debates at the time is revealing.  It shows that the single greatest reason for Parliament agreeing to the law was the heart rending situation of many women caught in a trap of poverty and neglect with unexpected pregnancies and very little being done for them.  The Pro-Abortionists, with good reason, appeared the more compassionate. In addition the dissenting voices were very muted; pro-lifers were caught out, were unprepared and had little public credibility.  In fact they came over as dogmatic and uncaring.  How different the situation is today with a burgeoning networks of pregnancy crisis centres genuinely looking after the women. The pro-life movement commands the compassionate high ground and gives women faced with unexpected pregnancies real, practical life choices and continuing care and help.

We have learned from our mistakes.

Despite the fact that the Hippocratic Tradition has been of such fundamental importance to the medical profession for thousands of years in a few short years it has been all but destroyed today.  A majority of our doctors support abortion on demand.

As to euthanasia the dramatic nature of Churchill’s warning are most starkly illustrated by the developments in Holland.  The Dutch medical profession resolutely refused to put into practice the euthanasing policies for eugenical purposes of the occupying Nazis in the Second world War.  Many of them were sent to die in concentration camps in Germany for their decision.  Their sacrificial bravery was a wonderful demonstration of their high principles.  These stated that euthanasia was, of itself, morally repugnant and equivalent to murder and secondly that the medical profession considered such procedures professionally unacceptable.

So what happened in Holland that this clear position was turned on its head?  The answer seems to lie in the areas, once again, of social concern and human rights.

We have done great disservice to western society by losing our way in the area of human rights.

The process has been relentless and extremely subtle.  By using tolerance and equality and extremely persuasive discussion of  heartrending hard cases a socio-legal reality has been constructed which has quietly turned the established order on its head.  By utilising the language of rights – largely new rights – and the capacity of the courts to quietly change national law outside the democratic process – a brave new world has been ushered in.

For the Dutch the right of individuals to insist on being killed by others at a time of their choosing was persuasively argued as an issue of dignity and compassion. The Dutch media, Parliament and medical profession were persuaded and euthanasia was legalised.

What is fascinating about Holland is that it had no tradition of hospice care.  In the absence of any national tradition of care for the dying those proposing euthanasia were, with good reason, able to win over the voting public to believe that their good intentions were the better way forward.

In particular they stressed the issue of autonomy, that special word of the permissive age, and that they were only interested in so called ‘voluntary’ euthanasia.

In the UK, by contrast, the miraculous development of the hospice movement has provided a popular alternative with wide acceptance in the popular psyche, one whose self evident provision of dignity and love and increasingly effective palliative care has held the compassionate high ground.  This has made it much more difficult for those proposing euthanasia.  But the battle has, nevertheless, been relentless – an assisted dying Bill is before Parliament in London even as I speak.

As we track these challenges in the area of the taking of life it is hardly surprising to see that the language of the new rights is being quickly enshrined in International declarations as well.

Precisely because bio-ethics are so bound up with the nature of man they have always played a big part in International conventions on Human Rights.

So, in 1947,  the Declaration of Geneva states unequivocally ‘I will maintain the utmost respect for human life’.  In 1959 the U.N. Declaration of the Rights of the Child states ‘the Child deserves ‘legal protection’ before as well as after birth’.  But the Oslo declaration in 1970 states ‘Therapeutic abortion (may be performed in circumstances) where the vital interests of the mother conflicts with those of the unborn Child’ and the amended Declaration of Geneva in 1983 stated ‘I will maintain the utmost respect for human life from its beginning’.

Do you see how the language is quietly changing?  Terms like ‘therapeutic’ have arrived.  We will see this later on when we address the issue of  cloning.

Where does this lead us?  In the UK to this bold and stark statement by the British Royal College of Gynaecology in 2000 ‘Abortion is a basic health care need’.

It is self evident that it is only a matter of time before attempts are made to enshrine euthanasia as a basic human and medical right.

We now move to the ‘making of life’ or Bioethics II.  Once again it is the UK which has been the first to legalise experimenting on, storing, manipulating and destroying human embryos.  In the national debates leading up to the passing of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (1990) the same interaction of the compassionate life ground – the pain of childlessness, the horror of not producing perfect babies etc. was allied to the suggested new right to have a child.

By limiting the length during which experimentation could occur (14 days) and promising careful monitoring through a statutory authority Parliament was persuaded into passing this into law,  Sadly, since then, the breakneck speed of scientific developments have chased ahead of proper ethical consideration.

There are literally daily developments in germline engineering, sex selection discussion, tissue typing and court cases relating to surrogacy and designer baby disagreements.  More often than not the emotional pain angle is used to disguise the lack of ethical clarity.

One has to ask the question – what is driving these changes, and at such breakneck speed?  The simple answer is money.  The Bioscience industry is enormous. 

It is not at all surprising that the fateful and momentus next development in ‘making life’ was prefaced by Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair declaring that he wanted the UK to be at the cutting edge of biotechnology business.

So the scene was set for the most recent of the UK’s firsts – the legalisation of human cloning.  This momentous development was rammed through without proper Parliamentary debate, no primary legislation on the grounds that it was merely a development of embryology.  An entirely fictitious distinction was introduced so called ‘Therapeutic Cloning’.  You remember ‘therapeutic abortion?’

Under the disguise of this name all the scientific procedures for cloning would be perfected whilst the moral high ground was protected by emphatic statements that so called Reproductive Cloning would never be legalised.

The trouble with the genie of unprincipled science is that once it has got underway it is near impossible to stop it.  And so, sadly, it has proved with the actual cloning of the first human child which has now been successfully carried out by a South Korean scientist this year.

The nightmare scenario of the making of life has now arrived.  It is a defining moment in human history.

Nevertheless all is not lost.  An interesting development is now emerging, namely that the scientific community is in danger of losing the trust of the very societies that they appear to be trying to serve.  In the United Nations later this year there is a significant number of nation states who are prepared to ban all forms of human cloning with a major International Cloning Ban.  In a very real way we have an opportunity to save scientific endeavour, for which we should all benefit, from the excesses of a non-representative minority group.

It does not take very much imagination to conjour up the kinds of paternity, disability, environmental and societal legal challenges that will arise out of unregulated cloning.  In addition the Human Rights abuses that underpin experimentation on human embryos and cloned babies need to be understood.  The ostensible medical purpose most touted internationally as the reason for the need for cloning is the production of stem cells.  Cells which have the capacity to develop into all manner of different cell types – liver, brain, nerves and so on.  Naturally, these are needed, so the argument goes in order to produce cures for a whole catalogue of dreadful human conditions – Alzheimers, Parkinsons and so on.  To date there is little evidence that they can do this.

What has been down played by the cloners is the fact that adult stem cells which do not come from the cloning process are showing increasing signs of having this  toti-potential and have already been successfully used in this way on humans. 

This is a powerful argument, which needs to be made more forcefully.  In addition surprisingly for those who have long fought the bioethic battles unexpected and profoundly helpful new allies are emerging, mainly environmentalists and feminists who for different reasons are deeply anti-pathetical to the unnatural processes of cloning. 

We must rise up and work with them for the sake of humanity’s future.

As if this is not enough already we move now into the last category ‘the faking of life’ Bioethics III.

In essence this is about the blending of man and machines. 

In this case the machines are unimaginably small – entering the stupefying world of nanotechnology on the one hand and the insertion of electronic artificial intelligence into the human body on the other.

The compassionate high ground arguments are becoming clear already.  These will be about disease control, enhancing humanity and freeing humanity from its physical limitations. Powerful arguments indeed.  It is a common theme running through the entire bio-ethics story.  The public perception of the compassionate credentials of those arguing the case.  We may or may not agree with them but whatever we think we must respond in active programmes of love in action to make our case effective.

The bio-ethical dilemmas posed by these kinds of developments need prescient and careful work.  Now.  By every means the absolute need for limits, underpinned by clear ethical principles must be put in place, internationally and nationally.  C. S. Lewis said, over 50 years ago, ‘There neither is nor can be simple increases of power on Man’s side.  Each new power won by man is a power over man as well.  Each advance leaves him weaker as well as stronger.  In every victory, besides being the general who triumphs, he is also the prisoner who follows the triumphal cars’.  This is real wisdom.

As to the faking of life the stakes are so unbelievably high that it is incumbent on us to get informed, think hard, make the alliances, do the research and perhaps most importantly seize the compassionate high ground with programmes which show that it is possible to look after the vulnerable and the disadvantaged without destroying them and certainly not by changing their very nature. 

It has been well said that the quality of a society is best demonstrated by the care it shows to the most vulnerable. But to open up society to the possibility of machine mankind sometimes referred to as techno-sapiens is of a different order entirely.  Biotechnology could usefully address itself to improving health must not cross the Rubicon by trying to improve the original design of man. As far as human rights on these issues are concerned we have time, for once, to put in place an international structure of checks and controls..  We must put this in hand immediately.

In conclusion the developments of this field of bioethics are inevitably highly complicated but please remember this:

‘taking life’
‘making life’
‘faking life’

The common theme is ‘life’.  We can echo the wondering words of the Bible ‘What is man’ that thou art mindful of him?

What indeed?  Surely we all echo Professor Leon Kass’ concerns when he says of these assaults on life.  ‘We are desensitised and denatured by a coarsening of sensibility that comes to regard these practices as natural, ordinary and fully unproblematic.  People who can hold human life in their hands unblinkingly and without awe have deadened something in their souls’.

Let us show by our love and our commitment to principles that there is a more excellent way.