British Section of the World Federation of Doctors Who Respect Human Life

London, England (LifeNews.com) -- After medical associations in the United States caused headaches for pro-life doctors by potentially approving a policy requiring abortion referrals for accreditation, now pro-life physicians in England are concerned. Dr. Evan Harris, the pro-abortion MP and member of the British Medical Association Medical Ethics Committee, has tabled a motion for the BMA's forthcoming Annual General Meeting July 7-10. According to the leading British pro-life group SPUC, the Society for the Protection of the Unborn, Harris's motion would marginalize doctors with a conscientious objection to abortion, specifically by effectively barring them from seeing patients with unplanned pregnancies. The Christian Medical Fellowship led by Dr. Peter Saunders, has published a comprehensive analysis of Harris's motion and his parliamentary agenda for more abortion, according to SPUC director John Smeaton. Meanwhile, two medical students went skydiving on Saturday to raise awareness of the pressure on medical staff to take part in abortion against their consciences. Siobhan Fearon and Abigail Smith, both 19, did the jump parachute jump in Lancashire, England. Smith recently wrote, “I had to help a close friend deal with the after-effects of an abortion. Seeing first-hand the impact an abortion has on such a young life has really challenged my views on the procedure. It has made me more determined to help women make sure that they make the right decision for them and their unborn child when faced with crisis pregnancies in my career." The event will raise money for SPUC through sponsorship.

From Wesley J. Smith, 18 June 2008.

I have been warning and warning that a virulent anti-humanism is becoming rampant on the left side of the scale, and even within the MSM. A site on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (roughly akin to the BBC) Website--Planet Slayer--specifically, "Professor Schpinkee's Greenhouse Calculator" tells you to enter and "find out when you should die!" I kid you not.

Hit the start button and find out when you should become six feet under (I assume cremation is worse than burial for global warming). I answered the questions roughly, and found I should have died at age 7.4. The pig (me) blew up in a bloody mess.

Realize that this is being sold to children and it is shameful and profoundly nihilistic. And it illustrates again how profoundly anti-human and pro death certain aspects of our culture are becoming.

As Andrew Bolt, a blogger for the Herald Sun noted:

What a lovely insight into the green philosophy. Children should die to save the planet. Scott [Bolt's son], I calculated, should have died at age 4.2.

A little joke, you will say. A mere attention grabber in a good cause. Trouble is, though, that there really is an insanely anti-human bent to deep green preaching on global warming, and there really are believers who feel only too keenly the planet is doomed by our sin, and humans must vanish.

Take the influential Gaia preacher Professor James Lovelock, whose latest book, The Revenge Of Gaia, calls for nine-tenths of humanity to vanish to "save" the planet from warming. Or hear the ABC's Ockham's Razor air a lecture by a former academic arguing we must "put something in the water, a virus that would be specific to the human reproductive system and would make a substantial proportion of the population infertile."

And see the lengths to which some true believers now go. There's Toni Vernelli, from animal liberation group PETA, who aborted her baby because "it would have been immoral to give birth to a child that I felt strongly would only be a burden to the world." There's Sarah Irving, from Ethical Consumer magazine, who sterilised herself because it "was the most environmentally friendly thing I could do" in a warming world.

In "The Silence of the Asparagus" I warned:

What is clear, however, is that Switzerland's enshrining of "plant dignity" is a symptom of a cultural disease that has infected Western civilization, causing us to lose the ability to think critically and distinguish serious from frivolous ethical concerns. It also reflects the triumph of a radical anthropomorphism that views elements of the natural world as morally equivalent to people.

Why is this happening? Our accelerating rejection of the Judeo-Christian world view, which upholds the unique dignity and moral worth of human beings, is driving us crazy. Once we knocked our species off its pedestal, it was only logical that we would come to see fauna and flora as entitled to rights.

And once we see "the planet" as personal, it is easier to see humans as the vermin good only for eradication.

From Wesley J. Smith, 18 June 2008.

The doctors in the Winnipeg Samuel Golubchuk case are intent on showing his family and society who is boss. Two more have resigned rather than provide care. From the story:

CBC News has learned that two other doctors--Bojan Paunovic and David Easton--have also said they will no longer care for Golubchuk.
"What I can tell you is that there are three critical care doctors who have recently resigned from the [intensive care unit] shift schedule at the Grace Hospital," said Heidi Graham, spokeswoman for the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority. The WRHA is working with other physicians to ensure the hospital can continue to provide critical care despite the loss of the three doctors, Graham said.

A few thoughts: First, this seems a power play to me--even though I have no doubt that the physicians sincerely believe that maintaining Mr. Golubchuk is the wrong way to go. Second, in their determination, they are, in effect, abandoning other patients in their care. Third, the court is precisely where this case belongs. If wanted life-sustaining treatment is really so egregious that it is torture--rather than merely a matter of a profound disagreement over values--doctors and hospital bioethics committees should have to prove it in an open court with full rights of due process and appeal for the patient/family. Moreover, I think the hospital should pay the legal expenses of the patient/family otherwise it becomes David versus Goliath.

And now, let's ponder this paradox. The Bioethics and Medical Establishments generally insist on the right to withhold wanted life sustaining treatment based on their views about the quality of the patient's life and/or the proper use of the resources involved. In contrast, they also insist that doctors and other medical professionals appalled by birth control, Plan B, RU 486, abortion, or (eventually) assisted suicide should not be able to opt out based on their moral principles because patients have a right to these services. Yet, the futile care cases involve life and death while the others usually are elective in the sense that there are not lethal consequences for the denial of services.

In reality, it isn't a paradox because the medical issues are actually the fronts for the real contest, which is about determining the first principle moral values that will govern general society--as, when I think about it, are many if not most of the issues that we discuss here at SHS.

From Wesley J. Smith, 15 June 2008.

So many of these adult stem cell success stories come to me now, that I am unable to post them all here at SHS. Two recent examples: A new adult stem cell therapy is successfully restoring vision to people with chemical injuries and a genetic defect that causes impaired vision. From the story:

Using stem cells from tissue donors, surgeons grew the cells in the laboratory before transplanting them onto the patients' eyes.

Dr Julie Daniels, who is leading the research team, will present the results at a conference on regenerative medicine being held in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, today. She said: "Before the surgery the patients were barely able to recognise when someone was waving a hand in front of their face but we have restored their vision to the point they can read three to four lines down the eye chart."

Nineteen patients have now received the treatment, known as limbal stem cell therapy, at Moorfields Eye Hospital.

Meanwhile, scientists have discovered a molecule that may one day lead to important regenerative techniques with a patient's own nerve stem cells. From the story:

Inspired by a chance discovery during another experiment, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have created a small molecule that stimulates nerve stem cells to begin maturing into nerve cells in culture.

This finding might someday allow a person's own nerve stem cells to be grown outside the body, stimulated into maturity, and then re-implanted as working nerve cells to treat various diseases, the researchers said. "This provides a critical starting point for neuro-regenerative medicine and brain cancer chemotherapy," said Dr. Jenny Hsieh, assistant professor of molecular biology and senior author of the paper, which appears online today and in the June 17 issue of Nature Chemical Biology

This is the opposite of no news being good news. With adult stem cell research, too much news to fit manageably within a blog format is very good news, indeed.

From Wesley J. Smith, 13 June 2008.

Cloning reduces procreation to a matter of mere manufacture and transforms human life into an instrumentalized natural resource, whether that life is a nascent cloned embryo created and destroyed for its stem cells or women exploited for their eggs--since an egg is required for each cloning attempt.

One reason the human cloning agenda has stalled is the lack of human eggs. I have been warning that researchers are more than willing to risk the health, fertility--and even the lives--of women to obtain these eggs, and if volunteers won't put themselves at risk, then they will promote an egg commodities market. And now in Nature News, we see that coming to pass. From the story:

US stem-cell researchers are calling for changes to state laws that prohibit compensating women who donate eggs for research. The laws, in leading stem-cell research states such as Massachusetts and California, are crippling the promising field of ‘therapeutic cloning’ that could produce useful embryonic stem-cell lines for studying various human diseases, they say.

It took Kevin Eggan and Douglas Melton, of Harvard University's Stem Cell Institute, two years and US $100,000 in local advertising to secure a single egg donor for their attempt to develop embryonic stem-cell lines to model diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The group, which obtained fewer than ten eggs, completed its experiments early this year, Eggan announced last month at a meeting of the Society for the Study of Reproduction in Kona, Hawaii. They are not yet ready to discuss results.

The US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) guidelines barring compensation were set in part to protect poor people from being exploited by labs that might offer large sums of money--along the lines of rules barring compensation for organ donation. But Alta Charo, a lawyer and bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin Law School in Madison, who liaised with the NAS committee that set donor-compensation guidelines in 2005, says the move was as much political as ethical. In California, supporters of Proposition 71, which allows funding for stem-cell and cloning research in the absence of federal funding, adopted compensation prohibition in part, Charo claims, "to assuage a fringe group of the women's movement" that was aligned against the assisted-reproduction community.

In other words, all of those assurances about protecting women are nothing more than temporary expedients that will be swept away as soon as it is deemed politically feasible. And if the assurances made in this area are nothing but cow manure, so too are the equally oleaginous promises to limit the lives of cloned embryos to 14 days, and to never engage in fetal farming, and to never want reproductive cloning. The mendacity of the pro cloning advocates in establishing "self limiting"--but really made to be broken--"ethical" guidelines makes me sick.

Next stop will be the developing world and biological colonialism. We need to not only bar buying and selling eggs for research in this country, but also have international protocols to govern the matter.

From Wesley J. Smith, 17 June 2008.

Apparently many doctors don't tell cancer patients when they enter the terminal stage of the disease. From the story:

Only one-third of terminally ill cancer patients in a new, federally funded study said their doctors had discussed end-of-life care. Surprisingly, patients who had these talks were no more likely to become depressed than those who did not, the study found. They were less likely to spend their final days in hospitals, tethered to machines. They avoided costly, futile care. And their loved ones were more at peace after they died.

The story proceeds to inaccurately describe AB 2747 as being about making sure people are told when they are dying when its real purpose is to open the door to backdoor assisted suicide via dehydration and terminal sedation, and thereby corrupt palliative care properly understood. Also, the bill defines terminal illness as one year to live--a time so far out that a doctor could be wildly inaccurate. But I have discussed that bill, its ultimate purpose, and media ignorance and biases before--and will again. So, for now, let's focus on the primary thrust of the story.

This is a sensitive issue, but patients deserve the truth without taking away hope in the understanding that there are few sure things in life--even with cancer. My dad's doctor told me and I told him--which for us was a very good way to go because we were so tight. His cancer was terminal but there was a small chance for life extenstion with chemo. Dad took the option and had a very good year as a result--which the doctor had not expected--during which he traveled and enjoyed life. We put him into hospice as he entered his final few months of decline.

An even better example: A friend of mine had a seizure. It was caused by lung cancer that had metastasized to the brain. The cancer was inoperable other than to remove the lung. He was told he had 3 months to live--eight years ago. He lived because he took every aggressive measure he could--and he believes, because of a whole lot of prayer.

On the other hand, as the story notes, not being candid impedes the patient from receiving proper hospice care opportunities. Indeed, I have another friend who did not get into hospice until two weeks before he died because the doctor refused to tell him it was in a terminal stage--and he only got into hospice after his wife forced a proper referral after I threw a fit about the unalleviated pain he was in.

Part of the problem, I think, is our hospice system. For those of us in the USA, hospice is often perceived as a kind of "abandon hope all ye who enter here" matter because in order to receive the services, patients must eschew all curative and most life sustaining treatment. When I interviewed Dame Cicely Saunders, the founder of modern hospice, she told me that was a profound weakness of the American system. In the UK, such a choice does not have to be made and people more readily enter hospice care knowing that if they want that last shot of chemo, they can have it (leaving aside for the moment, the problems with the NHS).

If we want more people in hospice, if we want to give them hope while still being able to care for them best when they are dying, a good way would be to change our hospice approach. Then perhaps doctors would be less reticent to tell patients that it looks like their time has come.

Sunday Times review by Dominic Lawson

May 18, 2008

The population-control freaks are back in town. Two factors have given the neo-Malthusians hope that their bleak world view and dismal remedies might once again become intellectually fashionable.

The first is the notion that the most efficient way for mankind to cut its carbon emissions is not to breathe at all - or at least to do so in much smaller numbers. The second is the recent rapid increase in food prices worldwide - which the neo-Malthusians, as ever, do not believe is capable of being addressed by either the market or agricultural technology. These days, even apparently liberal commentators in the mainstream press write effusively in admiration of China's coercive one-child policy.

Against this background, the publication of Matthew Connelly's book is not just perfectly timed: it is essential. The assistant professor of history at Columbia University has delivered a devastating account of the population-control movement; he demonstrates, detail by shocking detail, how a movement that believed it was acting from the highest humanitarian ideals became responsible for callous abuses of human rights on a global scale, ruining millions of lives in a grotesque eugenic experiment.

From The Times

June 14, 2008

A loophole in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill could permit some reproductive cloning without the need for fresh primary legislation, the Government has admitted.

While the update to fertility law maintains the ban on creating cloned babies, it has inadvertently made it much simpler for ministers to overturn it. If a reproductive cloning technique could be shown to be suitable for preventing the birth of children suffering from a rare type of genetic disease, it could be cleared for clinical use without changing the statute book.

Ministers would simply have to issue new regulations that permit this application of cloning. These would then need to be approved by a simple vote of both Houses of Parliament, instead of the laborious primary legislation required at present.

Reproductive cloning involves placing the nucleus of an adult cell into an empty egg, and then implanting the cloned embryo into a woman's womb. Any resulting baby would be genetically identical to the DNA donor. The procedure is banned under the 2001 Reproductive Cloning Act which was introduced because of scientists' fears about safety and widespread ethical concerns. This law will be repealed by the HFE Bill, which contains fresh provisions that prohibit such cloning.

The Department of Health, however, has accepted that the legislation contains a flaw that could in theory make it easier for the ban to be lifted. Dawn Primarolo, the Health Minister, insisted in a debate during the Bill's committee stage that the Government has no intention of using this new power under any circumstances. She added that as new regulations would have to be approved by Parliament, there will still be democratic safeguards against cloning.

Opposition MPs, however, have expressed concern at the watering down of the cloning ban. Evan Harris, the Liberal Democrat science spokesman, said: “There is no prospect of this Parliament, or future Parliaments, passing regulations that would allow human reproductive cloning. But it would clearly be better, for the sake of consistency and reassurance, for the Bill to do what we all thought it would do, which is totally to ban human reproductive cloning in primary legislation.” He said it would be relatively simple for the Government to redraft the Bill to exclude all possibilities.

The problem has arisen because of clauses that regulate a new approach to preventing diseases caused by faulty mitochondria - cellular “batteries” that provide energy. The flaw in the legislation, first highlighted by a small pressure group called Human Genetics Alert, is that not all mitochondrial diseases are caused by defects in mitochondrial DNA. Some are caused by defects in the nucleus.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said: “This power can only be used to permit the practice of curing an embryo or an egg of a serious mitochondrial disease. The Government will not use this power to permit the practice of reproductive cloning.”

From Wesley J. Smith.

Adult Stem Cells Taken from Parkinson's Disease Patients Produce Dopamin Making Cells in Brains of Rats!

This could be the early stages of some very good news for Parkinson's patients. Two years ago SHS readers learned that human paralyzed spinal cord injury patients have had feeling restored with their own nasal mucosa stem cells--a story utterly ignored by an MSM that would have shouted the breakthrough from the rooftops if it had been done with embryonic stem cells. And now, another type of human nasal stem cells from human Parkinson's patients have dramatically improved the brain functioning of rats giving hope for an eventual Parkinson's treatment. From the story:

The Griffith University study published today in the journal Stem Cells found that adult stem cells harvested from the noses of Parkinson's patients gave rise to dopamine-producing brain cells when transplanted into the brain of a rat. The debilitating symptoms of Parkinson's such as loss of muscle control are caused by degeneration of cells that produce the essential chemical dopamine in the brain...

Project leader Professor Alan Mackay-Sim said researchers simulated Parkinson's symptoms in rats by creating lesions on one side of the brain similar to the damage Parkinson's causes in the human brain. "The lesions to one side of the brain made the rats run in circles," he said. "When stem cells from the nose of Parkinson's patients were cultured and injected into the damaged area the rats re-aquired the ability to run in a straight line. "All animals transplanted with the human cells had a dramatic reduction in the rate of rotation within just 3 weeks," he said.

What about the side effects we've seen with ES studies? More good news:

"This provided evidence the cells had differentiated to give rise to dopamine-producing neurons influenced by being in the environment of the brain. In-vitro tests also revealed the presence of dopamine."

"Significantly, none of the transplants led to formation of tumours or teratomas in the host rats as has occurred after embryonic stem cell transplantation in a similar model. He said like all stem cells, stem cells from the olfactory nerve in the nose are 'naïve' having not yet differentiated into which sort of cells they will give rise to. "They can still be influenced by the environment they are put into. In this case we transplanted them into the brain, where they were directed to give rise to dopamine producing brain cells."

The advantage of using a patient's own cells is that, unlike stem cells from a foreign embryo, they are not rejected by the patient's immune system, so patients are free from a lifetime of potentially dangerous immuno-suppressant drug therapy.

Now that's what I am talking about!

Daily Telegraph, 12 June 2008

A teenage Christian died a fortnight after having an abortion to avoid conflict with her Muslim boyfriend's family, an inquest has heard.

Salford City Council is putting out a card for individuals to carry, refusing medical treatmet if they should be unable to speak for themselves (BBC News, 21 May 2008).  Note: since the Leslie Burke case we have no legal right to request treatment, but only to refuse it.

Profess Peter Millard, FRIP, comments:

Advance directives have fatal flaws. As Cicely Saunders said 'The one thing we cannot do is speak to the dissatisfied dead'.

Organ Donor cards inform relatives and medical staff of our desire to bring life to others after our death. In contrast, Advance Directives state that under certain circumstances, we would prefer death to life.

There lies the fatal flaw. Written in health, what if, your plea "I don't want to be kept alive on a life support machine" led to your not having life support for an illness from which you may recover?

Think about it – "That's not what you meant". Perhaps what you really wanted to say is, 'If my death is inevitable and all efforts at intensive care are unsuccessful, I would not like you to continue life support."

Prof Peter Millard, Emeritus Professor of Geriatrics, St. George's University of London

From Wesley J. Smith:

This is great: A child with a fatal genetic disease has apparently been treated effectively with a combination of adult/umbilical cord blood stem cells. From the story:

In October 2007, Nate Liao received marrow- and umbilical cord blood-derived stem cells and progenitor cells from his healthy, tissue-matched brother. Over the next six months, the skin and lining of his GI tract slowly improved, and skin biopsies on days 60, 130, and 200 documented increasing amounts of collagen type VII. By day 130, Nate's skin and the lining of his GI tract were beginning to show clinical signs that his skin was anchoring to his body.

Regenerative medicine has tremendous potential--and so much can be done without moral controversy.

A big proof of principle advance has been announced on the IPSC front. Human brain cells have been reverted to an embryonic-like state with drugs--and without using any cancer-causing gene, reducing the need for virus vectors. From the story:

A major advance in transforming one kind of cell into another is reported today that will likely to render plans to clone human embryos redundant in the quest for revolutionary new treatments...Now a team at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla and the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine in Germany, reports in the journal Cell Stem Cell that they have used drugs to help turn brain cells from an adult back into embryo like stem cells.

And what does this potentially mean?

While Yamanaka introduced four genes, at least two linked with cancer, to turn back the clock so they became more embryo like, Dr Ding uses just two genes, along with drugs, reducing the need for viruses and doing away with the cancer gene.

Dr Ding believes that, someday, chemical cocktails might be used instead of viruses to reprogram cells for cell-based therapy. One cocktail of small molecules would be used to revert specialized adult cells back to an earlier developmental stage, and then a second cocktail would differentiate the cell into the type needed to replace diseased cells in any organ or tissue. "This study is a proof of principle that this kind of approach is possible," he says.

So adult stem cells seem to be the therapeutic answer whether made from pluripotent stem cells or in their own right.

23rd May 2008

Daily Telegraph

The politicians may have cast their votes on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, but is the conscience of the nation at ease with itself? Far from settling the issues until the next Bill comes along, this week's extraordinary debates have in fact woken us all up to the reality of what is being done in our name. Many people are left deeply uneasy and perplexed, profoundly worried about the direction we are now taking.

And yet, for me it has been one of the most significant debates that the House of Commons has had in recent times, undertaken with a sober recognition that it was dealing with fundamental questions which transcend party politics. Although I would have much preferred other outcomes on all four of the debates, including the issue of fatherhood, I was glad at the sincerity and thoughtfulness of the discussion.

However, it would be wrong for us to think that the debate within society is over. A vote alone cannot and should not close the discussion. Underlying it are crucial questions. What is it to be a human being? What conditions do we need for our flourishing? In what sort of society can we put our faith and know that we are cherished and valued and above all enabled to grow in our search for what is right and true? It is in this context I want to make two practical suggestions.

First, it is increasingly clear that we need a statutory National Bioethics Commission. The parliamentary debate showed that for the moment we will have to live with an unresolved and deep tension between competing views on these fundamental questions. We need to use that tension creatively. We must search together to discover the deeper truths that enable us to secure the common good with justice for all, especially the disadvantaged and disabled, the elderly and, yes, the unborn too.

The bodies set up to regulate embryonic research and to comment on bioethics are too limited in their scope. A high-level national bioethics commission with the best expertise from different disciplines might not always be unanimous in its view. But it could greatly serve the common good simply through continuing dialogue and exploration.

As a society we urgently need to create the capacity for continuing ethical reflection. Ethics needs to keep pace with the science, and the public must not be left behind. Many other countries have such a commission and the UK is badly served without one.

Second, the vote to maintain the current status quo on abortion is not the end of the question. The idea of 'viability', prominent in the debate, is a concept dependent on the availability of resources and technology; not one that is able to found a moral distinction between a life that is worth our respect and protection and one that is not.

Life in the womb needs all our resources and protection and makes that claim from the moment of conception. For everyone involved, abortion is often a painful and shattering decision and it can only be a source of profound distress. That is why I believe we must all, whatever our beliefs, work together to find a better solution.

There are many people of all sides of the abortion debate who yet agree that 200,000 abortions a year is far too many. Even without a change in the law, the number of abortions could fall dramatically if more people worked together to foster a new understanding and approach to relationships, responsibility and mutual support.

Over the past few weeks, these profound questions have sometimes been falsely polarised as science against religion. The truth is that 'science' is never in itself on one side or the other. Of course we all need to understand what scientific advances tell us about the physical and biological worlds, about the material out of which human lives are made, and the breathtaking beauty and complexity of human development from the embryo.

But science remains a human activity. It takes place in moral space not a moral vacuum. What we are dealing with are profound ethical judgments which are informed, but not determined, by the insights of science. Our views will be shaped not only by scientific facts but also by our basic understanding of what a human life is, and also our philosophy of life (which may or may not be informed by a religious belief). Science cannot replace ethics.

I believe there is no conflict between faith and reason, and the positions articulated by people of faith about the ethical basis of law should, like those of anyone else, be tested at the bar of reasoned debate. They should not be excluded or marginalised simply because they come from a religious perspective, and nor should they be given special privilege in democratic debate.

The Church puts forward its teaching, but does not seek to impose its views nor indeed to tell any individual how to vote. What matters is the appeal to reason and intellectual argument, and the coherence of the vision of human life that we present. Reason and faith go hand in hand, and, for me, faith brings an insight into the truth which helps reason.

The gift which the Christian faith brings to all these discussions is a vision of humanity in which every human life has infinite value and dignity because it is made in the image and likeness of God. Whether or not we share this vision of faith, cherishing life and protecting the vulnerable, especially those who are unseen or unheard, is a central value of every society that wants to flourish.

This week's debate does not mark the end of the discussion but in fact, paradoxically, opens up the possibility of one that is much deeper. I hope this can become a conversation for everyone marked by a new openness and mutual respect in which we have much to learn from each other. This is because it is a common search about nothing less than the ultimate truth of who we are and what we are called to become.

Sunday Times, May 18

Jack Straw, the justice secretary, has ordered an inquest into 10 suspicious deaths at an old people’s convalescent unit in Hampshire.

The patients were among a group of 92 who died unexpectedly after being given abnormally large doses of morphine and other drugs at the Gosport War Memorial hospital. Their relatives believe their deaths were a form of euthanasia.

Straw has demanded the coroner’s investigation even though at least seven of the bodies were cremated. An inquest cannot take place in the absence of a corpse unless there are exceptional circumstances.

The justice ministry believes there is sufficient anxiety about the circumstances of the cases to require such a procedure, which, in the absence of remains, will be based only on a review of medical records and witness statements.

The allegation of “murder by euthanasia” is similar to that levelled against Harold Shipman, the GP from Greater Manchester who was Britain’s biggest mass killer. He was convicted of 15 murders but is believed to have killed about 250 of his patients. Shipman committed suicide in prison in 2004.

At Gosport, relatives complained repeatedly that the victims were not sick enough to require morphine. Questions about the hospital’s heavy use of the drug were also raised by the Commission for Health Improvement, the hospital watchdog.

Despite these concerns, police have been unable to gather sufficient evidence to pursue a prosecution. The two police investigations of the affair were themselves criticised for shortcomings.

The inquest into the 10 selected Gosport deaths was opened last Wednesday at Portsmouth and South East Hampshire coroner’s court.

A full hearing is scheduled for this autumn. A different coroner, Andrew Bradley, from Basingstoke, will conduct the process, which is expected to be the largest inquest of its kind.

The patients whose deaths are being investigated are Leslie Pittock, Elsie Lavender, Ruby Lake, Robert Wilson, Enid Spurgeon, Elsie Devine, Helena Service, Arthur Cunningham, Sheila Gregory and Geoffrey Packman. All 10 died between 1996 and 1999.

Ann Reeves, a beauty therapist, whose mother, Elsie Devine, 88, died in the hospital in 1999, has been one of the most vocal campaigners for the bereaved relatives. She is writing a book about the events and claims that questions had been raised as long ago as 1991 about the use of syringe drivers – automatic pumps that produce a continuous flow of morphine into a patient’s body.

“My mother was getting better until she went into that place. We are in no doubt there has been a massive cover-up. We are determined not to rest until we get justice for all of these patients,” she said.

Many of the other families are dismayed that their cases have not been selected for the inquest. Mike Wilson from Gosport says his 91-year-old mother, Edna Purnell, was out of bed and using a walking frame after a hip replacement operation, before she was transferred from Portsmouth’s Haslar hospital for a brief period of rehabilitation at Gosport.

“We have all her notes – we can prove what happened,” he said. “She was put to bed when she arrived there and given oral morphine, then transferred to a morphine pump. They threatened me with arrest when they caught me feeding her. They told me she was demented, which was not the case before they started giving her morphine. We are in no doubt that is what killed her.”

Richard Baker, a professor of clinical governance at Leicester University, carried out the statistical analysis that proved the abnormal scale of the death rate among Shipman’s patients. He is believed to have raised similar concerns about the death rate in Gosport.

The methods of at least two doctors and seven nurses working at Gosport have been subject to scrutiny. One of them, Jane Barton, a local GP who worked part-time at the War Memorial hospital, has been reported to the General Medical Council for unprofessional conduct.

A spokeswoman for Hampshire Primary Care Trust, which runs the hospital, said recommendations for improvements in the hospital’s practice had already been implemented. She pointed out the police investigations had come to nothing, and said the further scrutiny was “hugely distressing” for staff.

“We are confident [the hospital] provides safe, high-quality care,” she said.

Daily Telegraph
By Andrew Gimson

The sight of a legislator trying to stop mankind hurling itself down a slippery slope will always command the admiration of this column.

Edward Leigh (C, Gainsborough) took on this gallant role at the start of yesterday's debate on whether to approve stem cell research on human-animal hybrid embryos.

As Mr Leigh stepped on to the slippery slope, he must have known that he would very soon be run down by the massed optimists sliding so confidently into the abyss.

But before that happened, Mr Leigh conceived it his duty to try to call a halt.

So Mr Leigh urged MPs that the creation of human-animal embryos is "ethically wrong and almost certainly medically useless ... this is a step too far and it should therefore be banned".

Mr Leigh pointed out that even in this liberal age, the Commons does still ban some things.

It did not wish "to better regulate capital punishment. It simply stopped capital punishment".

As far as hybrid embryos are concerned, Mr Leigh referred to the articles of Roger Highfield, Science Editor of this paper, "who doesn't normally support my views".

But the idea that any scientific evidence could conceivably be adduced against the creation of hybrid embryos brought Dr Ian Gibson (Lab, Norwich North) to his feet.

Dr Gibson used to be dean of biology at the University of East Anglia and tried to trip Mr Leigh by asking him: "What is the difference between animal DNA and human DNA in terms of numbers of bases?"

Mr Leigh prudently avoided hazarding a guess, but observed that it was no good attempting "if I may say so ... to blind us with science", after which he showed that he was not trying to found his case on a profound knowledge of genetics.

For Mr Leigh said he had received an email from someone who "told me I was 30 per cent a daffodil and 80 per cent a mouse". We have to say there is nothing mousy about Mr Leigh, and we also find the bit about the daffodil implausible. Nor, if we were forced to suggest a flower to which he might be related, would we say the shrinking violet.

If Mr Leigh is anything, he is a geranium, for his features are bright red.

We met him once at a party, and he observed in a melancholy tone that he is sometimes unjustly assumed by journalists to be a heavy drinker, which is not the case.

Mr Leigh has a skin condition which makes him appear red, though at heart one can be assured he is true blue.

Mr Leigh grew serious again, contended that "we cannot and should not be spliced together with the animal kingdom", and ended with the pitiful words given by Mary Shelley to Frankenstein's monster: "I the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on."

To our delight, Sir Gerald Kaufman (Lab, Manchester Gorton) joined Mr Leigh in warning the House it was on a slippery slope.

"If you permit the creation of a hybrid embryo now what will you permit next time?" he asked.

But Dawn Primarolo, a health minister, was soon putting the case for "a pragmatic solution" and the vote went the Government's way, in favour of hybrid embryos.

One could not help being reminded of Dean Inge's remark about the Gadarene swine: "No doubt they thought the going was good for the first half of the way."

Daily Telegraph, 20 May 2008

For the first time since 1990, the House of Commons will today debate, and vote upon, abortion. Few issues arouse greater passions or raise more profound questions of morality.

There are many who strongly object to abortion on any grounds, other than to save the life of the mother. However, Parliament made the practice legal 40 years ago; and the debate now tends to focus on the upper limit for termination.

A series of votes in the Commons today will invite MPs to reduce the current 24-week limit. Advances in neo-natal care mean that babies born at 23 weeks cannot merely survive, but grow up to lead valuable and valued lives. It is difficult to argue a case against a reduction to 22 weeks (or even to 20, given the pace of medical progress) and we trust MPs will vote accordingly.

There is an even more pressing matter, which is the excessively large number of abortions at well below the legal ceiling. In truth, only a small number of terminations take place at more than 22 weeks. However, there are 200,000 abortions in this country every year at 12 weeks or less.

When abortion was legalised in 1967 no one imagined there would be so many terminations or that abortion would become a form of post-coital contraception. We also have the highest number of teenage pregnancies in western Europe and a growing incidence of sexually transmitted disease.

These are all of a piece and cannot be attributed to an absence of sex education, which is available in abundance in schools and in any magazine aimed at young people.

Governments routinely launch campaigns telling us not to drink, smoke, take drugs or eat to excess; yet there is no sense of a similar effort being expended on advising women about the medical and psychological trauma of abortion.

Nor is sufficient emphasis placed on adoption rather than abortion, the former having fallen precipitously while the latter has risen. It is essential that abortions are not made easier to obtain.

The suggestion that a single doctor's approval should be sought or lunchtime abortions be made available at the GPs' surgery must be resisted. We also need to question as a nation how a loss of the taboos that once acted as a constraint on behaviour conspired to make such a distressing procedure almost commonplace.

Nadine Dorries, the Conservative MP whose amendments to the Fertilisation and Embryology Bill have allowed this subject to be revisited in the teeth of government objections, is to be congratulated, not least for standing up to personal intimidation.

But we should not have to wait for the appropriate legislative vehicle to come along: each Parliament should have the chance to review the law.

Sir, We are convinced that stem-cell research is a highly promising area of science offering potential for new methods of treating many serious diseases. We welcome legal acceptance, public and private funding, and international co-operation for a range of stem-cell research.

But we also wish to caution against false optimism and unrealistic claims for as yet unproven avenues of research. It is irresponsible, unjustified and, especially, unfair to patients for researchers to claim without evidence that a refusal to fund, to license or to approve a particular research approach will “delay treatments for incurable illnesses”.

In particular, given the current state of more conventional embryonic stem-cell research, of adult stem-cell research, and of induced pluripotent stem-cell research, there is no demonstrable scientific or medical case for insisting on creating, without any clear scientific precedent, a wide spectrum of human-non-human hybrid entities or “human admixed embryos”.

We therefore question the scientific validity of proposals to create such embryonic combinations currently before the UK Parliament. We note with concern that, though not widely reported, the Bill does not just propose licensing so-called cybrids (99.9 per cent human, 0.1 per cent other species). It also proposes that embryos “created by using human gametes and animal gametes” (50 per cent human, 50 per cent other species) or human embryos “altered by the introduction of one or more animal cells” (ie, any percentage of human material) could be created under licence (UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill 2007-08, Section 4A(5) and Schedule 2. 3(3)).

All such proposals are highly speculative in comparison to established sources of human stem cells, and we remain unaware of any cogent evidence suggesting any might yield significant therapeutic dividend.

As scientists and clinicians actively involved in stem-cell research and regenerative medicine, we do not hold a single common view about the relative merits, ethics and potential of adult v (conventional) embryonic stem cells. But we all believe that extravagant claims regarding the purported merits of human-non-human interspecies embryos are mistaken and misleading, and that such research would damage public confidence and support, to the detriment both of the cause of stem-cell science and, ultimately, of patients.

Prof Neil Scolding, Bristol

Prof Michael Chopp, Detroit

Prof Dr Wolfgang M. Franz, Munich

Professor Alan Mackay-Sim, Queensland

Professor T. John Martin, Melbourne

Dr Rodney L. Rietze, Queensland

Prof Dennis McGonagle, Leeds

Prof Dr Bodo-Eckehard Strauer, Düsseldorf

Professor Gianni Angelini, Bristol

Dr Roger Barker, Cambridge

Dr Maureen L. Condic, Utah

Prof Dr Ursula Just, Kiel

Prof Dimitris Karussis, Jerusalem

Dr Letizia Mazzini, Piedmont

Dr Jean Peduzzi-Nelson, Detroit

Dr Carlos Lima, Lisbon

Scientists have created what is believed to be the first genetically modified (GM) human embryo.

A team from Cornell University in New York produced the GM embryo to study how early cells and diseases develop. It was destroyed after five days.

The British regulator, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), has warned that such controversial experiments cause “large ethical and public interest issues”.

News of the development comes days before MPs are to debate legislation that would allow scientists to use similar techniques in this country.

The effects of changing an embryo would be permanent. Genes added to embryos or reproductive cells, such as sperm, will affect all cells in the body and will be passed on to future generations.

The technology could potentially be used to correct genes which cause diseases such as cystic fibrosis, haemophilia and even cancer. In theory, any gene that has been identified could be added to embryos.

Ethicists warn that genetically modifying embryos could lead to the addition of genes for desirable traits such as height, intelligence and hair colour.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, which will have its second reading this week, will make it legal to create GM embryos in Britain.

The bill will allow GM embryos to be created only for research and will ban implantation in the womb. Ethicists, however, say that the legislation could be relaxed in the future.

The HFEA has said that it is preparing for scientists to apply for licences to create GM embryos. A paper, published by the authority, states: “The bill has taken away all inhibitions on genetically altering human embryos for research. The Science and Clinical Advances Group [of the HFEA] thought there were large ethical and public interest issues and that these should be referred for debate.”

The Cornell team, led by Nikica Zaninovic, used a virus to add a gene, a green fluorescent protein, to an embryo left over from in vitro fertilisation.

The research was presented at a meeting of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine last year but details have emerged only after the HFEA highlighted the work in a review of the technology.

Zaninovic pointed out that in order to be sure that the new gene had been inserted and the embryo had been genetically modified, scientists would ideally need to grow the embryo and carry out further tests.

The Cornell team did not have permission to allow the embryo to progress, however.

Scientists argue that the embryos could be used to study how diseases develop. They also say GM embryos could be more efficient in generating stem cells.

However, Dr David King, director of Human Genetics Alert, warned: “This is the first step on the road that will lead to the nightmare of designer babies and a new eugenics. The HFEA is right to say that the creation and legalisation of GM embryos raises ‘large ethical and public interest issues’ but neglects to mention that these have not been debated at all.”

He added: “I have been speaking to MPs all week and no one knows that the government is legalising GM embryos. The public has had enough of scientists sneaking these things through and then presenting us with a fait accompli.”