Author: Lynn Green

 

**This is a personal website and reflects my thoughts and convictions. It does not represent any official position held by Youth With A Mission.**

Technology of all kinds presents us with pressing ethical questions, but we often duck them because they seem too complex for us to understand, let alone provide some guidance. The question of 3-parent children is one of those. Our House of Commons has passed a law allowing it. BUT, it is not too late to help some outstanding people to provide guidelines. My friend and respected Member of the House of Lords, David Alton can explain:

Earlier this week the House of Commons voted to permit the creation of what some MPs described as genetically modified babies. The full debate and voting list is in Hansard at:  

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmhansrd/cm150203/debtext/150203-0002.htm#15020348000001

Note that among those who voted against the proposals, on what was a free vote, were the two most senior law officers in the Government, the Lord Chancellor and the Attorney General. Around half the House of Commons voted against or abstained: 128 against and 350 for.

The House of Commons was given 90 minutes to consider this awesome question – a decision which will alter the genetic make-up of future generations. Just 90 minutes for GM babies – 90 hours for fox hunting. Nye Bevan once said that “politics is the religion of priorities”. What does this say about our priorities?

On February 24th the Mitochondria Regulations will now be considered in the House of Lords.

The former Cabinet Minister and Chairman of the Conservative Party Chairman, Lord Deben (John Gummer), with all-party support, has laid a Motion before the Lords urging Peers to consider more carefully, and with much more detailed parliamentary scrutiny,  the safety and legal implications of this decision. He has called on the public to write to Members of the House of Lords asking them to vote for the Motion, which reads as follows:

  Lord Deben to move that this House declines to approve the draft Human Fertilisation and Embryology (Mitochondrial Donation) Regulations 2015 laid before the House on 17 December 2014 and calls on Her Majesty’s Government not to lay new draft regulations until a joint committee of both Houses has been established and has reported on (1) the safety of the procedures permitted by the draft regulations, (2) the compliance of the draft regulations with European Union and domestic law, and (3) the key definitions used in the draft regulations.  

The Regulations contain two distinct methods of altering germ line genetic identity – spindle transfer and pro-nucleartransfer.

They both raise questions of legality in international law and both raise safety concerns.

The second (but not the former) also involves the destruction of at least two and, in some cases as many as ten, human embryos to create the new modified human embryo.

During the Commons debate, the Minister, Jane Ellison, was keen to combat the slippery slope argument with the following rejoinder:

“I looked back at the debates in the House on IVF all those years ago, when some were worried about a slippery slope, and all the safeguards are still in place more than two decades later.”

Those who used the slippery slope argument back in 1990 did so on the grounds that allowing for the destruction of human embryos in IVF was likely to lead to the commodification of the human embryo, and further abuses to human life.

Two decades later, around 2 million embryos have been experimented on, destroyed, or otherwise discarded. The 1990 legislation paved the way for the dignity of the human embryo to be defiled with the addition of gametes from other species. And this week, Parliament allowed for the genetic modification of human embryos. If that isn’t evidence of having fallen down a slippery slope, I don’t know what is.

We have been here before. In 2007, prior to the legalisation of human/animal hybrids, disabled people were told that without that provision, those of us who opposed it, were condemning them to years of suffering. It was a lie. The disabled people who were brought in wheelchairs to lobby Parliament in favour of animal human hybrids were shamelessly manipulated and exploited, cruelly raising false hopes.  Funding agencies subsequently refused to finance the procedure which Parliament was stampeded into authorising. It was bad science and bad ethics. 

The Warnock Report, which led to the 1990 legislation and paved the way for animal-human embryos, said that “the human embryo should be treated with respect”. Baroness Warnock subsequently said it was hard to see how you were showing respect as you flushed the human embryos down the drain. Welcome to Dystopia.

 

**This is a personal website and reflects my thoughts and convictions. It does not represent any official position held by Youth With A Mission.**

Stories of sexual abuse of children are in the press every day now.  The term covers a very wide range of abuses, from rich and powerful men thinking they can get away with anything, so they manipulate underage teenagers to have sex with them, or at the other end of the scale, deeply warped men (almost always men) who rape toddlers and babies.  Is this deviancy spreading, or are we just more alert to it because the news media are particularly on the lookout for cases of paedophilia?

It must be a bit of both.  My guess is that rich and powerful men, whose ambition and pride lead them to abandon self-discipline, have been sexual predators in every generation because they think they are too powerful to be held to account. More often than not, they were right.  That is a tragic reality for the countless victims.

Deviant sexual desires toward children are another matter, and here I think the number of people involved is growing exponentially.  There is an undeniable explanation for my assertion.

Nearly all paedophiles have been victims as children. That is not to say that every child who is sexually abused is destined to become a paedophile, but many do.  Evidence at trials and my own experience of talking to abusers confirms that nearly all of them have multiple victims and some manage to abuse hundreds.  In light of that, the reason for the explosive growth and the high risk to children today is to be expected, though we fervently wish it were not so.

A recent short news clip on the BBC addressed the pressing question, “What do we do with the growing number of convicted paedophiles?”  They highlighted a mother and her teenage daughter who are running a “name-and-shame” website and network.  They are deeply concerned about the risk to children when convicted abusers are settled in a neighbourhood without the knowledge of local families.  They want everyone to know when a convicted abuser moves into their neighbourhood, so they can keep their children safe.

Then they interviewed a convicted abuser who has had a “support and accountability circle” whilst in prison.  He is worth quoting.  “I did it just because I wanted to.  I never thought about the parents or even the child.  I just wanted to, so I did.  Without the circle, I would be released and do it again.  But I would never do that again now.”  They also talked briefly on camera to a member of the circle.  He was a volunteer who cared enough to so something that him cost time and effort.  And he had confidence that the convict was no longer a danger

The website and network has a “one-size-fits-all” label—paedophile.  It implies that they are all dangerous and need to be publicly exposed and humiliated for life.  This would apply equally to the 18 year-old boy who was sexually intimate with his 17 year-old girlfriend and her family prosecuted him, and to the manipulative, repeat-offending, older man who preys on young school children.  Public exclusion, discrimination and humiliation have no redemptive effect.  It is likely that people so treated will be hardened in their behaviour and find ways to reoffend or commit other crimes as they come to hate their persecutors.

The support and accountability group treats each person as an individual and, in the context of a relationship that develops over years, can predict with some accuracy whether or not they are still a risk to children.  (We must take into account that no person is completely predictable because we are free will agents.)

The law is not much help here.  By its nature, law cannot treat people as individuals.  The 18 year old and the abuser with countless child victims both go on the sex-offender register.  By contrast, personal pastoral care, by its very nature approaches each person as they are.

Can any nation afford to provide a support circle for each sex offender?  Of course not!  Once again we are confronted by the impotence of the law and of government.  We consistently overload government with expectations it can never meet and then we complain about government intrusion and growth with the consequent increase in taxation.

So there is a great need for people of faith, who have both the heart-motivation to help and the moral framework to help, to develop outreach to the growing number of abused abusers.  By helping them, you could prevent countless other life-destroying crimes. The expertise is available to be acquired, so you don’t have to be an expert to get started.  Are you one of those?