Faith in Britain

It must be fourteen days after something or fourteen days into some sort of existence.'

A group of four who served on the Warnock Committee came out against the use of this early-stage human being for experimental purposes. One of these was Professor John Marshall: 'We took the view that from fertilisation this entity was alive and its potential was so great and so important that it was wrong to destroy it ... we really must insist on this respect for human life.'9 Marshall went on to say that if experiments were allowed up until fourteen days, 'they will start pressing for more later on ... If only we could go on to 20 days we could show you this and that. That's the scientific logic of it.'

With many other scientists Professor Marshall points out that the research which Parliament has authorised is not aimed at finding cures for disability, merely at identification leading to destruction: 'Because the entity has the potential to become a person ... nothing should be done that prevents it realizing that potential, and things can be done to help it attain that potential.'

Fertilisation is the only event to which each of us can point and say, 'That is when I began and I have been me ever since.' The appearance of the primitive streak is one of thousands of events, not a watershed. It is an incident in a life already begun.

Fertilisation determines the colour of our eyes and the colour of our skin, our sex, our uniqueness - not fourteen days.

The conclusions which we draw about the tiny, vulnerable, powerless human embryo have the highest moral significance. They determine how we regard the status of every individual and how we perceive their human rights and our obligations towards them. Our conclusions will also determine our attitude towards disabled people, the senile, the incurably sick and the terminally ill.

The justification of experiments is that means justify ends, benefits outweigh costs.

These unenlightened arguments have a frighteningly logical conclusion. Dr Michael Hall was quoted in The Guardian in 1987 on the subject of scientists' long-term intentions: 'It would mean we could manipulate at will the genetic pool, produce super-races, modify ethnic traits, excise socially unacceptable habits - in fact produce people to order.' During the House of Lords debate Lord Reay summed up what MP Rosie Barnes - a strong supporter of experimentation agreed was 'culling the handicapped'. He said, 'We should also consider society's need to reduce by every means possible the proportion of handicapped children.'

Not merely the elimination of handicap, but of handicapped children, by every means possible. This thinking is summed up by the Oxford philosopher, Jonathon Glover, who argues that for utilitarians killing is in no way intrinsically wrong, but is only wrong because of its implications for happiness and misery. This is the