The Embryology Bill has provoked a bitter split between religion and science, MICHAEL HOWIE reports
THE cries of a baby were the only other sounds to be heard as Cardinal Keith O'Brien delivered his Easter Sunday sermon to a packed St Mary's Cathedral in Edinburgh yesterday.
It was perhaps a fitting interruption as Scotland's most senior Catholi
c clergyman delivered his much-trailed blast at the government's controversial embryo research legislation.
Accusing Prime Minister Gordon Brown of "an unprecedented attack on the sanctity and dignity of human life", he warned that the research could lead to the creation of hybrid babies and experiments of "Frankenstein proportions".
Urging his congregation to perform their religious duty as missionaries , he said the general public was largely unaware "of what is going on" with regards to specific measures contained in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.
Cardinal O'Brien believes it his duty to educate the public about Mr Brown's plans to allow "hybrid" embryos, to further research which scientists say could lead to new treatments for diseases such as multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
But he has sparked a furious argument between scientists and religious leaders that has seen bitter accusations slung from both sides.
It is a dispute that will continue to rage, just like the decades-old abortion debate, in the clash over the fundamental question of how much interference in the process of human life should be allowed in the name of medical science.
Opponents of the legislation, including Cardinal O'Brien, Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor, who is leader of the church in England and Wales, and, it seems, a large number of Labour MPs, underpin their position with several arguments.
First and foremost, they say the creation of hybrid embryos is morally reprehensible – "playing God" to an unacceptable degree.
Some also question whether the use of human-animal embryos will deliver the medical breakthroughs that scientists talk of, while many fear the legislation is the "thin edge of the wedge" that will eventually lead to even more ethically repugnant developments, such as the creation of hybrid babies.
Researchers want to use animal eggs because of the shortage of human eggs. They would remove the nucleus of the animal cell and replace it with a nucleus taken from a human cell. It can then grow and divide like a normal embryo, generating stem cells that can be harvested by scientists. The stem cells can become almost any type of cell within the body and it might be possible to use them to create a "repair kit" for humans.
Supporters of the legislation say creating hybrid embryos will allow more research into how diseases like multiple sclerosis work.
As stem cells have the potential to grow into different tissues, in future it might be possible to transplant cells cloned from individual patients to cure diseases.
Professor Stephen Minger is one of many high-profile scientists who accuse the Catholic church of misleading the public over the nature of the research.
Yesterday, he said: "Where the Church has it wrong is in thinking we are mixing human and animal cells together, creating something that is a true hybrid.
"But what we are doing in the process of doing this inter-species work – which is referred to by scientists as using 'admixed embryos' – is physically removing the nucleus from the cow egg, which completely removes the genetic and species identity, so it is essentially no longer a cow egg.
"There are cow versions of proteins and some mitochondria (which provide the cells with energy), but as the cell lines expand over time, those proteins will be exclusively replaced with human proteins and the mitochondria will become predominantly human."
He says the Church has failed to recognise the lengthy deliberations by those involved in drafting and informing the legislation.
"We went through a very long consultation with the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority over the last year and there was an exhaustive science and technology committee hearing in the House of Commons. In both cases, overwhelmingly, they agreed that these are human embryos, they are not a mixture of animal and human. The fact they have been derived using what was originally a cow egg in no way mitigates the fact they are human."
Professor Robert Winston stepped into the row, accusing Cardinal O'Brien of lying in his comments against the bill. "They are misleading and I'm afraid that when the church for good motives tells untruths it brings discredit upon itself," he said.
The controversial issue will be debated in the House of Commons within weeks, but outside parliament the battle lines have been firmly drawn.
In an open letter, more than 300 patient charities and organisations urged the government to allow the research.
One the other side, Cardinal O'Brien has joined other senior clergy in openly condemning the proposals, writing to MPs and the Prime Minister.
As he explained yesterday: "I recently signed a letter with other church leaders which concluded: 'This bill goes against what most people, Christian or not, reckon is common sense. The idea of mixing human and animal genes is not just evil. It's crazy'."
Science behind the researchTHE experiments involve transferring nuclei containing DNA from human cells, such as skin cells, into animal eggs that have had almost all their genetic information removed.
The resulting embryos are more than 99 per cent human. The embryo would be grown in the laboratory, then harvested for stem cells – immature cells that can become many types of tissue.
The embryos have to be destroyed within 14 days – when they are no bigger than a pinhead – and cannot be implanted into the womb.
At the moment, scientists have to rely on human eggs left over from fertility treatment, but they are in short supply and are not always good quality.
A team led by Professor Stephen Minger at King's College, London, has been offered a licence to use human-bovine embryos to study degenerative neurological diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.
A team based at Newcastle University has been offered a licence for tissue research. A third team, led by Professor Ian Wilmut, the Edinburgh-based creator of the first cloned mammal, Dolly the sheep, has yet to apply for a licence for planned research into motor neurone disease.
