Official report urges cautious approach to three-parent IVF: ethics yet to be considered

LIFE welcomes the cautious approach to three-parent IVF in the recent report published by the HFEA, which has been investigating into the safety and effectiveness of procedures to avoid the transmission of mitochondrial disease. However, LIFE calls for careful consideration of the profound ethical issues involved in these experimental techniques, notably the deliberate creation and destruction of human embryos to create healthy individuals, something which can never be morally acceptable.

Conclusions of the report

The conclusions of the core panel set up to review the latest scientific evidence relating to the safety and effectiveness of three-parent IVF said that the limited evidence does not suggest that the techniques are unsafe. They stressed, however, that these techniques are relatively novel with scant data existing to provide robust evidence on safety. Consequently, they urge more research before the techniques can be considered safe for clinical use. Only after the safety and effectiveness of three-parent IVF has been established can regulations be passed by Parliament to allow the use of eggs and embryos with altered DNA in assisted conception, a provision that was introduced to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act in 2008.

Ethical issues have yet to be considered

However, the report does not consider any of the ethical issues involved in the two experimental methods used to create three-parent human embryos: pronulclear transfer (PNT), which involves the creation of an embryo from which the maternal and paternal genetic information is removed and placed in another embryo from which its nuclear genetic material has been taken out,  and maternal spindle transfer (MST), which involves the transfer of the maternal nuclear genetic material prior to fertilisation into an enucleated donor egg. It will be for Parliament and the public (who have been promised a consultation) to consider the ethical acceptability of creating and destroying lives to treat lives, and creating people with three genetic parents.

The ethics of three-parent IVF

What are the ethical considerations raised by these two techniques? Firstly, PNT involves the creation and destruction of lives to treat lives: embryos are created specifically and then destroyed for the benefit of the eventual individual created to be free of mitochondrial disease. This is wholly morally unacceptable. Human life cannot be used solely as a means to an end; every human being is an end in themselves, their existence being first and foremost for their own good and flourishing, not that of others. This point alone, from a principled ethical position, renders PNT an ethically unacceptable procedure.

Is this also the case with MST? Since the genetic manipulation occurs in the egg prior to fertilisation, MST avoids this particular ethical obstacle. However, both PNT and MST would inevitably require the creation of multiple embryos to ensure success of one eventual babe in arms. We then have the ethical problem of the fate of these spare embryos. Will they make the grade? Will they be frozen indefinitely or implanted at a later date, or will they be used and destroyed in experimentation? Undoubtedly, most of these spare embryos will be destroyed sooner or later, thus violating the intrinsic and inviolable right to life of these innocent human individuals, an act which is always morally illicit.

A further consideration to both PNT and MST is that these techniques involve germ-line genetic engineering, which means the donor mitochondria will be passed on from generation to generation down the female line. Medical interventions only usually affect the individual to be treated. Germ-line engineering creates the unusual situation of the intervention affecting other people too, and whilst this can have positive effects, such as reducing the transmission and incidence of mitochondrial disease in the population, subsequent generations could be put at risk of any unforeseen negative consequences which may result from the process itself.

Furthermore, we need to ask the question, is it fitting for a human being to be the product of such complicated technological processes? To what degree should a person be the product of techné? Indeed, should a human person be a work of art, something to be designed or, rather, are they a gift (a gift that is in a unique relationship to and expression of their parents)? How far are we willing to go as a society to ensure that individuals are created disease free? And what will the psychological impact of this be on the individual created?

The last point to be considered is what will be the impact on familial relationships and personal identity of having a second genetic mother, albeit a mother who makes a very limited contribution? Is it morally acceptable to deliberately create individuals with such confused and complex familial relations, which risks impacting heavily on one's sense of personal identity?

Conclusion

In conclusion, both these techniques involve ethically unacceptable procedures which transgress the principle of inviolability of life, although MST can be considered slightly less problematic ethically speaking than PNT, since it does not involve the creation of sacrificial embryos to produce an healthy embryo (however, there are more technical problems involved with MST than with PNT). MST, like PNT, would inevitably involve the creation of surplus embryos whose fate would be death in the majority of cases. Both PNT and MST raise further serious ethical considerations: the risks of germ-line engineering, the problem of designer children and the problem of the deliberate creation of confused and complex familial relationships and the psychological impact on personal identity that all of this could entail.

What now?

We can either make light of these ethical considerations and dismiss them on the grounds that they threaten to impede the progress of science and so permit the continuance of the suffering of future generations, or we can pay heed to the ethics involved, especially the ethical principle of the inviolability of each and every human life, and search, instead, for medical solutions that respect the rights and dignity of every human being. The latter is the position of LIFE.

As this issue will soon return to Parliament for further discussion, LIFE urges people to engage with their Member of Parliament, to raise their concerns over the ethics involved in three-parent IVF: the unacceptability of the use and destruction of the lives of some to treat others; the serious concerns over the ever increasing move towards designer children, and the mounting burden caused by the deliberate creation of increasingly confused and complex familial relationships with the negative impact this may have on personal identity as well as the psychological impact of being a product of such a technique.