Printed from: https://archive.cmf.org.uk/advocacy/pressrelease/?id=4
Published: 13th December 2001
CMF General Secretary Peter Saunders said, 'The use of umbilical cord stem cells in bone marrow transplants is an exciting scientific advance, which if successful, offers the chance of a cure for otherwise fatal inherited blood disorders. Although the procedure involves some risk for the child receiving the graft, this is rightly balanced against the severity of the underlying disease. The risk of umbilical cell harvest to the donor baby is negligible, as after birth, the umbilical cord is not needed.
However, in allowing preimplantation diagnosis and embryo selection in order to ensure the birth of tissue-matched donor babies, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has today set a precedent which is both unethical and dangerous.
It is unethical because embryos that fail to fulfil the selection criteria will be discarded. This runs counter to historically accepted codes of medical ethics such as the Declaration of Geneva (1948) which requires that doctors maintain the utmost respect for human life from the time of conception even against threat. Disposing of human beings, at any stage of human development, on the pretext that they are genetically inferior or surplus to requirements, is not treating them with respect. It is true that in very rare circumstances, the only way of ensuring that a tissue-matched donor is born, is to use this kind of discriminatory eugenics. But the end of saving a human life never justifies the means of 'search and destroy'.
The precedent is also dangerous, for two reasons. First, despite the HFEA's assurance that the procedure will be used only in 'very rare circumstances and under strict controls', the ruling is likely to lead to a slippery slope whereby designer embryos and fetuses can be created and destroyed for more and more trivial reasons. Second, it reduces the donor child to a commodity. The HFEA is obliged to give high regard to the welfare of any child produced by artificial reproduction when they are making decisions like this. But it cannot be in the best interests of any child, however much they are subsequently loved, to be created for the primary purpose of providing transplant material for somebody else.'
Steven Fouch (CMF Head of Communications) 020 7234 9668
Alistair Thompson on 07970 162 225
Christian Medical Fellowship (CMF) was founded in 1949 and is an interdenominational organisation with over 5,000 doctors, 900medical and nursing students and 300 nurses and midwives as members in all branches of medicine, nursing and midwifery. A registered charity, it is linked to over 100 similar bodies in other countries throughout the world.
CMF exists to unite Christian healthcare professionals to pursue the highest ethical standards in Christian and professional life and to increase faith in Christ and acceptance of his ethical teaching.
