Life After Death

18 July, 1996). Unthinkingly, we are entering a trap. There is no known case of successful gene therapy. When Pandora opened her famous box, the one thing which was left inside was hope. Gene therapy does not even offer that. It does, however, pose phenomenal social and ethical questions with which we have hardly begun to grapple. It will also guarantee psychoanalysts a secure future as they try to unravel the personal identity problems which genetics will create.

Considered Debates These questions deserve better than the loaded and partial consideration of those who have a direct vested interest - such as the insurance companies - or another Warnock-style committee, or authority like the HFEA. They have shown themselves to be as effective in ethical matters as the House of Commons Committee policing financial misconduct by MPs. In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick unearthed the molecular structure of DNA. Watson described his breakthrough as "anti-religious". If that is what motivated him, all the more reason for involving those who cherish religious beliefs in challenging the way in which his discovery is being used.

The Gospel of Death: Marie Stopes The International Planned Parenthood Federation was established in 1952 and housed rent-free in the offices of the Eugenics Society. As one of their great luminaries, Marie Stopes put it: [No society] "should allow the diseased, the racially-negligent, the careless, the feeble-minded, the very lowest and worst members of the community to produce innumerable tens of thousands of warped and inferior infants". In Britain, genetics and eugenics are shamelessly promoted in pursuit of Marie Stopes's objectives. It is an agenda which has touched the most remote corners of the earth. In China alone, in one year 21 million sterilisations were undertaken, 18 million IUDs inserted, and 14 million abortions performed.

Chinese law now permits disabled babies to be killed after birth. Marie Stopes would be a happy woman.