Carol Sarler

Down with slippery slopes!

Real, life-changing medical advances are being blocked for fear of ‘designer babies’; humane laws are stymied because of things they do not propose

Well, of course the Assisted Dying Bill failed. It mattered not a jot that an overwhelming majority of public opinion urged its success; it was always going to fail and the only surprising thing is that anybody is surprised. I’ll bet my teeth on a few more certainties, too. Last week the required 200,000 people put down their spliffs long enough to sign a petition in favour of decriminalising cannabis and thus, in October, the matter will be debated by MPs. Proponents, however, really should not bother — they will lose, regardless.

Also last week it was reported that genetic engineering is now our most rapidly developing area of scientific research; nevertheless, each of its life-enhancing discoveries continues to face immense hurdles — at which many fall — on the journey between laboratories and needy patients. In every case, the chance of change succumbs to the same argument: that of the ubiquitous ‘slippery slope’. Assisted dying bit the dust not because anybody seriously wishes to prolong agony among the terminally ill but because, in the dark minds of scattergun alarmists and conspiracy theorists, to allow it would be a slippery slope towards truckloads of septuagenarians being hurled, still kicking, into the gaping mouths of crematoria.

Lightening up the law on cannabis may be opposed for several reasons, good and bad, worthy of consideration and far-fetched. It does not tax me particularly, either way; I never was greatly fond of the stuff. But when it returns to debate next month, the move will fail not by dint of the reasoned arguments. It will fail because, as always, the ignorant cling to the belief that the use of cannabis is a slippery slope towards the use of, say, heroin — in spite of countless studies proving the exact opposite. If you don’t have to go underground for your weed, you won’t be introduced to the nastier products for sale in the same den — much as, if you do not venture into the high street, you are less likely to indulge in an impulse buy from a shop window.

The massed opposition to genetic engineering must break the cleverest of hearts when they are accused of creating a slippery slope to ‘designer babies’.

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