The Embryology Bill

As my personal ethics are firmly based within what is right for the environment, I find myself in the strange position of agreeing with the catholic church. However The Embryology Bill that is going through parliament at the moment will not allow human-animal hybrids to be created so the facts need to be outlined first.

What the bill would allow if passed, is the use of egg cases of animal ova to be used. Filled with human cells, these cell lines will then be used to develop stem cells. Therefore it is not as has been said human and animal hybrids that are being created.

Further my moral objection to this work is much more based upon the fact that we are playing about with human genes when we don't fully understand what most of the genes do. For example there is a gene in the human genome that helps protect against malaria. Great you could say; except this same gene is also the cause of sickle cell anaemia.

While it would be a great benefit to mankind if a way could be developed to reduce the risk, or even cure malaria, would it be justified if the cure caused other conditions? Unlike conventional drug therapies or treatments, introducing new genes or new cells to treat a patient could alter the genetic make up of subsequent generations.

Therefore, some new wonder treatment, could be discovered and used long before we discovered, generations latter, that it was the cause of something previously unknown and possibly more serious than the original condition.

Medical science is littered with wonder drugs that it was latter discovered had serious side effects. Here in the UK we recently had a report on Seroxat an anti depressant that caused an increased risk of suicide in some users. Further, the company manufacturing the drug knew of this at least two years before being forced to notify the authorities. They only did this when the media discovered the truth.

Now I can envisage some new wonder gene therapy being developed, making some business billions of dollars and them fighting tooth and nail to protect that income even if it started to look as though that therapy was causing a problem.

Equally, with the process of developing these cell lines in animal ova, there is a small chance that some of the animal genes could combine with the human DNA. If that were to happen it would take years before that was even noticed. This could lead to disease that are at the moment exclusively animal becoming infectious to humans.

Inadvertently we could be on course to creating genetically modified humans. I realise that for the people with conditions like Parkinsons disease or altzimers, this form of stem cell research could be seen as some great new hope, but every technology has a down side, an unforeseen consequences that a lack of research fails to see.

It is the blinkered rush into these new technologies that could cause problems worse than climate change that are the basis of my moral objections to this Embryology Bill. We are already seeing that GM crops are killing off bees, I foresee that if allowed this research could kill off the human race.