Can the scientists always be right?

Human embryology and fertilisation Bill

The most senior Roman Catholic scientist in Britain has attacked his Church’s opposition to proposed laws that will allow the creation of human-animal embryos for research.

Sir Leszek Borysiewicz made a passionate defence of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill and the science that it will make possible.

Trying to put aside the religious arguments I still find my mind questioning the “ethics” of some scientists and the medical profession over this bill. We live in a society where we are often told that the explosion in the world’s population is causing great risks over how we consume resources, and that eventually there will be too many mouths to feed, and here in the UK the demographics firmly show that we live in an ageing society that has problems financing it’s pensions provision and social care for the elderly.  Yet we have the world of science ever more determined to find new methods of research that will seek to eradicate certain life threatening diseases and illnesses, they seek to increase the longevity of life, regardless of the social cost. Have they no belief in the concept that there must be some sort of “natural selection”? That we all must expire and die one day?

What will be the consequences of finding a cure for Alzheimers disease or Parkinsons disease? Will the expense of having used stem cell research to formulate the cure then move on to something else to eradicate? Where do you stop? Eventually the human body must give up despite the attempts of science to keep it going longer and longer and longer, rather like a 1920s Panhard.

Another concept in this Bill which the scientists cannot possibly provide an answer for is the assignment of a right for lesbian couples to have children via IVF treatment. Just how can that be assigned? If lesbians cannot conceive through natural means, then what natural “right” can be given that allows them to carry a child without a father? Even though the conception can only be provided through the use of donor sperm where does that leave the father in the life of the child? What happens if sometime in the future the biological father decides he wants visitation or custodial rights? What about the rights of the child? Surely they must be entitled to contact with the father should they so wish?

It just seems odd to me that we can talk about this concept of a “right” where nature itself disallows conception without the combined efforts of a male and a female!