IVF and the use of excess embryos for research

Youth Defence, the Republic of Ireland’s leading pro-life group, in mid-November launched a billboard and public education campaign calling on the government to halt all plans to legalise embryonic stem cell research. This campaign was in reaction to the proposal made last January by Mary Harney, Ireland’s Health Minister, to bring forward legislation that would allow the use of the human embryos in medical research.

The Irish minister’s announcement was made notwithstanding the last three years of polls showing that between 60 and 70 per cent of the Irish population is in favour of retaining legal protection for embryonic human life from the point of conception.

“You, me, everybody, we’re all just grown-up embryos,” say the Youth Defence billboards that are the centrepiece of the new campaign and already on display around Ireland.

The second phase of the “You, me, everybody” campaign will be thousands of postcards and information leaflets to be distributed to all the churches throughout the country.

Ireland, whose constitution affords protection to the unborn, has been the subject of an orchestrated campaign from within the government and the research community to bring legalised embryonic stem cell research into the country. Youth Defence contends that legalising embryo research would also undermine the country’s legal prohibition against abortion because it would require amending the constitution.

Despite the insistence of the “experts”, public opinion is strongly against the use of embryos as human test subjects in Ireland. During its public consultations, the ICB received 2,200 submissions, 69 per cent of which said the human embryo had the full moral status of a human being from the moment of fertilisation and 70 per cent opposed their use for research. In surveys, 65 per cent said they would be unwilling to use medical treatments derived from killing embryos.

Embryo research has “failed miserably” to help patients and is far exceeded in medical successes by adult and umbilical cord blood stem cell therapies, claims this Irish pro-life campaign group as well as the authoritative L’Osservatore Romano, among others. Why then, one may ask, is the Irish government pushing so hard to allow experimentation on living human embryos in an officially pro-life country?

This is especially relevant to our country. With the production of excess embryos, if IVF is given the go-ahead and the Administration keeps repeating the boast it is positioning Malta as a good base for “research”, might it not be only a very short step away from authorising the use of excess embryos for “research” rather than “unprofitably” destroying them?