The EU and stem cell research

Why Europe may soon split along religious lines

4 August 2007

Stephen Pollard says that if embryonic stem cell research is banned in some parts of Europe — as it might be under the new EU treaty — old hostilities will resurface

what they like, but such legislation will be irrelevant when the medical breakthroughs have been made elsewhere. Because whatever the moral rights and wrongs, such bans will lead to a new social divide. We know exactly what will happen when a government refuses to allow medical interventions because of ethical or religious concerns; look at Ireland when abortion was illegal. With these latest breakthroughs, those who can afford to leave their country to be treated abroad will simply buy a return plane ticket.

Bans, when people are free to travel to a country where a treatment is legal, have only one effect: they give freedom to choose to the wealthy and deny it to everyone else. Take sex selection of children which is, in most cases, illegal across the EU. The latest technology means that small amounts of foetal DNA can be examined in a mother’s blood just six weeks into pregnancy. A Y-chromosome reading means that the foetus is male. The British company DNA Worldwide is now marketing a mail-order test, with an answer guaranteed within a fortnight — well within the abortion framework. In the modern world, bans on such services are whistling in the wind.

There is no easy solution. An EU-wide policy would be undemocratic and as equally unworkable as individual member state bans.

Treatments derived from embryonic stem cell research are coming, imminently, and they will bring untold relief to those whom they can benefit. Banning them may salve consciences but the impact of such restrictions will be straightforward: to reintroduce across Europe a division based on religion. In Catholic and conservative Christian countries which choose to ban, new advances will be available only to the wealthy. Elsewhere, they will be available on the basis of need. The further complication of the free movement of labour, and moves to allow patients to elect to be treated wherever in the EU they wish if they are denied treatment in their own countries, only adds to the complications.

It may be buried in a footnote to the treaty, but the fallout from new medical technology is going to be on the front page before long.

Stephen Pollard is president of the Centre for the New Europe in Brussels.