Madam, - Dr James Clinch, the former master of the Coombe Hospital, is reported as saying that while the Irish Medical Council was unable to say when life began, he personally believed that life began at fertilisation. Archbishop Diarmuid Martin is reported as affirming the right to life "from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death".
The Archbishop has also urged a broader debate on embryos and in this context it needs to be said that there is a Christian viewpoint other than the Roman Catholic. Archbishop John Habgood, who as well as being a bishop is also a distinguished scientist, has written that "those who would disallow any interference [ with embryos] from the moment of conception onwards are implying that the physical historical indicators of personhood are important enough to carry the full moral weight ascribed to complete persons. The embryo, in this view, may only represent the first page of a story, but it is a continuous story whose beginning is just as important as its end.
"Those who take a less absolutist view. . .are implying that physical continuity is not by itself a sufficient indicator of personhood. In this view, the moral weight of personhood rests on inward attributes which enable us to be aware of ourselves and to relate to others attributes which cannot ever have the semblance of a beginning until there is at least a rudimentary nervous system and until some actual relationship is in process of formation." (Being a Person, pp 26-27.)
In other words, it makes both common and theological sense to assert that life is a continuum and that the emergence of the individual occurs gradually. - Yours, etc,
Very Rev ROBERT MacCARTHY, Dean of St Patrick's, Upper Kevin Street, Dublin 8.