Dr Williams gets it right

Fabio P.Barbieri

That is the strange thing about Dr.Williams. The same man who talks the suicidal nonsense about Sharia that he did, and then refuses to see the point even when indirectly rebuked by a colleague (Nazir-Ali, who knows a bit more about it than he does), is the man who preaches his Easter sermon - a spiritual and philosophical masterpiece that deserves placing along the great religious classics from John Chrisostomos to JH Newman. One person who heard him preach more than twenty years ago in Oxford still remembers his sermons as the finest and wisest she ever heard (and, being an Evangelical, she has had a chance to hear plenty of preaching). It may be a hackneyed phrase, but Dr.Williams really has his Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde sides.

raymond joseph douglas

thank you archbisop

Joe Strummer

Scaremongering has always dogged and surrounded any scientific progression and even in 2008 it still makes its presence felt.

Yes, any worries or concerns should be aired but the contrived and calculated hysteria whipped up only negates the arguments of those wishing to hold science in a period of arrested development and retardation.

Paul L

Is his view (which I agree with)
Sharia compliant? Just a thought.

David Lindsay

The World At One featured a discussion of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.

In favour of human-animal hybridity, spare part babies and the abolition of fatherhood was the Chairman of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, Professor Lisa Jardine, who is Centenary Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary, University of London, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Against was the Anglican Bishop of Swindon, a PhD and former practitioner in the field. Where has he been up to now?

Lay participation at every level, from juries to Parliament to the HFEA, is integral to our culture, and absolutely vital to our liberty and democracy. Its corrosion has been and is the corrosion of our culture, of our liberty and of our democracy.

But so much for the fiction that this is a dispute between clued-up scientists and us uncomprehending artsy, and especially churchy, people. I don't think anyone would have too much trouble spotting the scientist here.

But, of course. Embryonic stem cell research has yielded absolutely nothing. Those who used to practise it have accordingly moved on to adult and cord blood stem cells instead.

And those still advocating it, as well as these further horrors, have economic, social, cultural and political agenda wholly unrelated to science.

Fabio P.Barbieri

Paul L: to judge by the goings-on in the Islamic Republic of Iran, where, according to a TV report I saw a couple of years ago, this kind of research is cultivated and encouraged.

Sergey

That is true that stem cell research untill now gave nothing to medicine, but in fundamental biology it was very usefull. These experiments do not require any human-derived materials. As for using siblings as potential cell donors for curing othervise incurable children ilnesses, I see nothing controversial in this. Just as blood transfusion, then bone marrow transplants, and then organ transplants, these are quite justifiable ways to save lives. No interspecies hybrid embrions can develop above very early stages, so to call them potential humans is plain wrong. Every step in experimental medicine, from autopsy to vaccination, historically arose lots of irrational fears that later looked silly.

Dominic L-R

Melanie says ""It’s no use arguing that anyone with an ounce of compassion for children suffering from appalling diseases must support the ‘saviour siblings’ clause, because after all what’s the problem with taking a few cells which can easily be spared and for such a noble cause?"
Well indeed. I am wondering what exactly is the problem here... Melanie does not even bother to give us a counter argument. She just talks in general terms of "the further giant stride towards the instrumentalisation of human life".
I am not convinced.
People have children for all sorts of reasons - for example, many parents would admit to having a second child mainly so that their first child would not grow up without a brother or sister. And yet when the second child is born, the parents offer the same unconditional love. Is this situation really so radically different?
Does Melanie honestly believe that parents who choose to have a 'saviour sibling' through IVF would treat that child differently to their other children? That they would somehow just see it as a means to an end? Would not the parental instinct to care for one's children and offer them unconditional love be so strong that the parents would love the new child equally? When the motivations for this particular research are based on the noblest of instincts, the love and care of our children, I cannot believe this will lead us to 'instrumentalise' human life.

D Gray

I suppose the longer he stays alive the more chance a decent amount of info coming forth from his gob

David B

So what happened to the "extraordinary moral obtuseness" you attributed to this same man on 24 March, Melanie?

James Van Patten

"... an embryo that could in principle become a distinctive person"

Yes, and twinkle in a man's eye could some day become a distinctive person too. Dr Williams' argument is absurd and you're out of your depth, love.

David Lindsay

"No interspecies hybrid embrions can develop above very early stages" - how do you know, Sergey?

I've been having great fun in certain areas of the Internet in recent days. First the cannabis lobby, and now this. I hope that they enjoy defeat, probably not on saviour siblings, but increasingly possibly on hybridity, and almost certainly on the abolition of fatherhood.

And those MPs who voted for this Bill and whose marginal constituencies contain lots of Catholics (as does, just for a satrt, pretty much every Labour-held seat in Scotland, the North and the Midlands), I hope that they enjoy retirement.

Sergey

Viability of interspecies chimeric embrions was tested experimentally in a lot of studies. This is a powerful method to explore epigenetical mechanisms - the main object of developmental biology. Chimeras arise only if blastomers from different lines of the same species are taken. These studies started half a century ago, when the first mosaic mice were produced. The most wonderful achievement of recent studies was sheep-goat cell hybrids, made by mixing two two-cell embrions, one from sheep, another from goat. But living animal was produced only if the sheep blastomer was taken from trophoblast, the structure giving rise to placenta and extraembryonic fetal membranes, and goat cells from inner mass of embrionic stem cells. In result, a sheep gave birth to goat, with no sheep genes in it. The are powerfull epigenetical mechanisms preventing development of chimeric embrions in mammals well before organ formation begins. Everybody know about Dolly sheep, but very few know that this success was irreproducible even for sheeps. In primates all attempts failed. So reproductive cloning in primates and humans is biologically impossible.

Thom

Mel, Mel, Mel....

I agree with every word you say here; this is a monstrous and amoral bill by a monstrous and amoral government. What I think you and Williams are missing (and believe me, I think he is DELIBERATELY missing this; I'm willing to believe otherwise with you) is that this is actually a EU directive that is being ham-strung through parliament to give it a democractic air - they demand harmonised laws on such things and the amoral shell that the EU represents is all to willing to consider human embryos, as is does human lives, a commodity to be brokered for in the corridors of power.

Look it up, report the truth Mel and ignore the guff and you'll go further to remove the taint of fascolist mindsets from our land.

Adam B.

Mr van Patten, what's with the "love" at the end of your condescending sentence?

Alexandrovich

From 'The Archbishop of Cant' to 'Dr. Williams' - he's really not that bad now he agrees with me. Shameless.

Commondog

Alexandrovich.

So just because a person is misguided on one issue, that means he must be judged to be misguided on every subsequent occasion?

Scraping the polemic barrel a bit there aren't we?

Alexandrovich

No Commondog, just pointing out one of the unsubtle methods Pavlova employs to ring that bell which makes you lot salivate.