National Blood Donation Week: considering the problems with synthetic blood generated from embryos

“Do something amazing... give blood.” The heights of human altruism. The dizzying heights for me; I faint just having a blood test. So I am always deeply impressed when I meet someone who makes the free choice to give nearly half a litre of their blood on a frequent basis. Less than 5% of the population donates, supplying the rest of us with the blood we need for transfusions and other blood products. This is what our lives rely on; the courage, health and generosity of a few.

We all know there are shortages  - who can ignore the frequent appeals on TV that make people like me squirm - so  it surely would be a wonderful day if medical science were able to produce limitless supplies of synthetic blood to meet all our needs as a nation.

This wishful goal might yet be achieved. Scientists appear to have found a way using embryonic stem cells taken from 4 day old embryos left over from IVF. The stem cells are coaxed to develop down the pathway necessary to generate blood cells.

New possibilities courtesy of science

The research team from Edinburgh University, led by Professor Marc Turner, who is also clinical director of the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service (SNBTS), say that in recent experiments, which used over 100 human embryos, they have ‘proved the principle' that human red blood cells can be made in this way, even though human clinical trials are some years off, largely due to safety issues. As reported in the Telegraph, this scientific development provides the possibility of producing the ‘entire supply of blood for the UK from a single “universal blood donor” who only ever existed as a 4 day old embryo'.

The ethical problems

And therein lies the grave ethical problem; the destruction of human lives for the benefit of others, turning the once altruistic act of obtaining our blood supplies into a morally illicit one; the sacrificing of a few so that the many may live.

Perhaps you are thinking, “But it's only an embryo, it's not really a human being?” What do we mean by saying something is human? It's human appearance? Well, okay, an embryo doesn't look too human, but it does look how a human has always looked at that stage in its development. Let's take another suggestion, thinking and feeling. Feeling first: all animals are sentient, so that's nothing unique to us, so it can't be that. Thinking, perhaps? If thinking is what makes us human, then we all stop being human every time we drift off to sleep at night, or when sleep is induced on an operating table.  No, we don't just start being human when we can think. It must be something else. Is it biological species, then? Well, if the embryo were subjected to DNA tests, it would show itself to be human, but so would a test on a human skin cell. Being human must be more than just having a human genome;  a human being implies a living individual, and so something is a human being when it has a human genome, when it is living and is an organised whole. This is exactly what the human embryo is: organised (it directs its own development, and where cells end up is not haphazard, but highly controlled, something which scientists are only just beginning to understand); living (it is growing at an extraordinary rate), and is an individual (a totality in itself).

The 4 day old embryos destroyed and used in this technique are living human individuals, but maybe you're now thinking, “Yes, but they're not going to know, so surely it's morally okay?” Let's think about this for a second; how many of us would advocate doing something nasty to someone whilst they are sleeping on the justification that they won't know anything about it? We wouldn't, so neither should we accept this argument when human embryos are the subject under the spot light.

A final objection is the powerful argument of utility - it's going to be destroyed anyway, so let's use it. Human beings are not a means to an end; they are not an object to be used, but are always subjects to be treated with dignity and respect. Furthermore, the ethical nature of something cannot be reduced merely to utility; whether something is morally right or wrong does not depend solely on its net positive outcomes, but depends also upon the nature of the means used to achieve that end. This technique involves the use and destruction of human embryos, albeit in embryonic form, but still, they are living, human individuals, and to kill them and use them as raw biological material fails to respect their inherent, fundamental human rights: the right to life and the right to physical integrity. This technique is intrinsically immoral.

Conscientious objection

People of moral conscience who have come to the rational conclusion that the worth and value of a human individual starts when that individual starts to exist (fertilisation/conception), will be forced to refuse life-saving treatment because of the unethical nature by which this synthetic blood is produced, namely the immoral destruction of human lives. Pursuing this route stands to put many peoples' lives at risk.

The moral duty of medical science is to pursue lines of research which respect the dignity of every human person, including the smallest and most vulnerable members of our human community, the embryo outside the womb. Scientists do have other options: there are many alternative, ethical sources of stem cells which could be pursued instead of embryonic stem cells.

As a so-called cultured society, are we really comfortable with the destruction of human beings becoming the foundation of medicine and our health?