In the footsteps of Enoch Powell and David Alton

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, tabled late last year, aims to do little more than bring preceding legislation up to date and into line with the new procedures required in stem cell research. For example, amendments to the 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act carried within the new bill would allow the production of certain types of embryo containing both human and animal DNA, which are not currently permitted.

Other amendments in the bill, which is due to be enacted in 2009, bring within regulation all human embryos brought into being outside of the body and ban the selection of embryos for implantation on the basis of sex. In addition, the test currently used to determine if a woman qualifies for IVF on the basis of a child-to-be’s ‘need for a father’ is to be removed, as is the proscription against same sex couples being given the legal status of parents of a child resulting from donated gametes (eggs and sperm). Certain restrictions on data-gathering by researchers is also to be removed.

As is well known, Robert Winston has stepped forward as a public champion of this legislation. He is one of Britain’s most distinguished academics and researchers in the field of human reproduction and sits in the House of Lords on the Labour benches. While fully recognising the possible misuses and dangers of genetic manipulation, he knows that there have already been huge benefits. So while supporting safeguards he wants to push forward the frontiers of science and medicine in order to bring about real improvements in human well-being.

His website explains that: “Stem cells are ‘parent’ cells capable of turning into one of the many different types of cell in the human body. When genetically modified they could be used to provide tissues and organs for human transplantation for some of the numerous serious degenerative diseases so common in humans” (www.robertwinston.org). Part of the thrust of research in this area is the use of admixtures of human and animal tissue, and the so-called ‘inter-species’ embryos.

Such ‘human admixed embryos’ include cytoplasmic hybrids or cybrids (embryos created by techniques employed in cloning, using human gametes or cells and animal eggs, which are mostly human apart from some animal mitochondria); human-animal hybrid embryos (any other embryo created using a human egg and the sperm of an animal, or an animal egg and a human sperm, or by combining a pro-nucleus of an animal with a human pro-nucleus); human transgenic embryos (embryos created by the introduction of animal DNA into one or more cells); and human-animal chimeras (human embryos, altered by the addition of one or more cells from an animal).

Not surprisingly, given that human-animal mix, the bill faces howling and totally irrational opposition from an assorted pack of soft left eccentrics, anti-science maniacs, far right traditionalists and religious social conservatives, who, if they got their way, would outlaw even the possibility of research in this area. They are also out to limit access to abortion facilities and crucially they uphold and venerate that holy of holies, the patriarchal family. Lesbian mothers are an abomination for them. And in the thick of the howlers and irrationalists is, of course, the Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow.

George Galloway, is keen to buff up his religiously pious image. Hence his well calculated Daily Record piece of purple prose last month: “And the proposals in the Embryo Research Bill before the house imminently blasphemes against the very idea of god. The bill contains the literally monstrous idea to allow boffins to insert human DNA into animal eggs creating hybrid human-animal embryos. This Frankensteinian proposal ...” (Daily Record March 24).

Such bellowing language is designed to appeal to the protestant and catholic hierarchies in Scotland. Indeed they are a faithful echo of cardinal Keith O’Brien, leader of the Roman catholic church in Scotland, who had already denounced the bill for allowing experiments of “Frankenstein proportion”. But there is also the mosque; especially important for Galloway at the moment in the run-up to the May 1 Greater London Authority elections. Muslim fundamentalists are equally determined to defend and promote so-called traditional values. Meanwhile, Respect Renewal maintains an official vow of silence.

Unofficially, however, one hears again the hoary old argument that Galloway should be allowed to vote on this piece of legislation according his ‘conscience’. In other words, he should be given licence to deny others concrete rights and benefits. Of course, nobody would think of forcing Galloway to personally engage in embryo research and he has a perfect right not to do so. But neither he nor any other MP can be permitted to deny the right of those who wish to carry out such potentially beneficial work from doing so.

Communist MPs would be obliged to vote according to party policy, not individual ‘conscience’. That would apply to any such elected representatives with religious convictions - it would be up to them to square their belief with their party membership. If Respect Renewal claims to be an organisation of the working class, then it must oblige its MPs to put party first too.

In the pre-split Respect it was the Socialist Workers Party that was left squirming with embarrassment at some of Galloway’s pronouncements on questions like abortion and immigration. But diplomacy demanded that the SWP kept quiet. The International Socialist Group raised objections internally but, for example, only went public about the dropping of gay rights from the 2005 general election manifesto at the following Respect conference.

So what does the ISG - whose comrades have been centrally involved in the Respect Renewal split, including on the leadership - think of Galloway’s ‘Frankenstein’ outburst? Is it content that his views will most likely be interpreted as those of Respect?

Respect Renewal seems as pathetically leader-driven as the organisation of which it is the bastard offspring. Without accountability no representative is worthy of the name. And an organisation that allows its leading figure to get away with doing his own thing whenever it suits him has turned itself into a vehicle of Bonapartism.

There has been a long struggle around the whole question of assisted human reproduction. Certainly bourgeois rationalists and liberals, such as professor Winston, have played a far more honourable role than Galloway, at least in this field.

Back in 1978, the first baby conceived thanks to in vitro fertilisation (IVF), Louise Brown, was born. Inevitably, creating human life in this way was not to the liking of social conservatives, who used all sorts of religious (indeed, biblical) arguments as to why it was ‘against nature’. But such specious argumentation made little headway.

However, medical and scientific developments in human fertilisation and embryology continued apace and by July 1982 the Warnock Committee was set up to consider these. The UK’s embryologists were in the forefront of advances. The first baby resulting from a frozen embryo was born in 1984, the same year that the committee issued its definitive report.

Reaction in the form of that figurehead of 70s racism, Enoch Powell MP, proposed at the end of his 1984 Unborn Children (Protection) Bill, to prohibit all experimentation using human embryos. In early 1985, this bill got a majority of 172 at its second reading in the House of Commons. Trying to head off the gathering storm, the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) quickly moved to set up a voluntary licensing authority in order to self-regulate the provision of infertility treatment services.

In early summer 1985, Powell’s bill was defeated, but only through parliamentary shenanigans. However, sensing danger, a political campaign for research into human reproduction, Progress, was launched by a coalition of patients, doctors, medical researchers and parliamentarians in autumn 1985. Professor (now Lord) Robert Winston headed it.

By October 1986, Tory Ken Hargreaves had taken up Powell’s baton. He presented a 10-minute rule bill to amend the law “relating to human embryos produced by in vitro fertilisation”. It was a device to pressure the Tory government itself to introduce prohibitive legislation during the next parliamentary session. Hargreaves’s ploy worked - his bill passed its first reading by 229 to 129 votes and a government consultation paper was followed by a white paper in 1987.

Intense lobbying by Progress, backed by a growing array of infertility patients, genetic disability voluntary organisations and parliamentarians, produced a shift in House of Commons opinion. Although it was a cross-party organisation, there were almost no Liberal Democrat supporters; indeed, Lib Dem MP David Alton, a vicious anti-abortion campaigner, led the anti-science camp. Leading supporters of Progress in the Commons came from the Labour Party, Plaid Cymru and the Conservatives.

Although usually denoting themselves as ‘pro-life’, the overwhelming majority of leading anti-abortionists were virulently against making new human lives ... at least in this way (ie, using assisted conception). They were also against making life easier for those suffering congenital handicap, such as those with cystic fibrosis, Duchenne muscular dystrophy or the horrific Tay-Sachs disease. Advances against these life-threatening and fatal conditions were in peril thanks to their opposition to embryo research. Never was the designation ‘pro-life’ so ill-deserved. The most enthusiastic ‘pro-lifers’, like Alton, exposed themselves as narrow-minded bigots whose ideology not only opposed a woman’s right to choose, but was here shown to be profoundly anti-human.

When the government tabled the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill in 1988, it put forward two mutually exclusive clauses. Parliamentarians had to choose one or the other, on a free ‘conscience’ vote. This prevarication was largely thanks to the campaigning work of Progress and its associated voluntary organisations, which had opened up a clear division in government and Tory ranks, let alone within other parties. Parliamentary lobbying succeeded and in 1990 the act was passed, using the exact wording that Progress had promoted from the beginning. A firm parliamentary majority against embryo research had been completely turned around: the Warnock proposals were approved with substantial majorities in both the Commons and Lords. This was a singular reversal for the forces of the religious right, which they have never forgotten.

In addition to permitting embryo research with stipulated safeguards, including a 14-day limit on the life of any embryo involved in research, the new act also amended the Abortion Act 1967. As a consequence, a pregnancy could now be terminated if to continue it would put the life of the mother at risk, or pose a risk to the mental and physical health of the pregnant woman and/or foetus; or there was evidence of extreme foetal abnormality.

The 1990 act regulated the creation, keeping and use of embryos outside the human body and the storage and use of gametes to create embryos, prohibiting certain activities from being carried out without a licence. In 1991, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority became the oversight organisation for some assisted conception techniques and all human embryo research.

After several years of inquiries and scientific conferences, cloning mammals became a common topic of conversation, almost regarded with public affection (eg, Dolly the sheep). It appeared that those propagating the wilder flights of fancy, such as the cloning of new Einsteins or Brad Pitts, were drowning in their own hubris. Thus, when the Human Fertilisation and Embryology (Research Purposes) Regulations of 2000 - which permitted therapeutic, but not reproductive, cloning - were voted on, they were easily agreed by a Commons majority of 192.

In 2008 that advance needs defending and consolidating against the attacks of Galloway - a man who stands  fully in the spirit of Powell and Alton.