Madam, - I refer to the letter of May 14th from my former UCC colleague Dr Dolores Dooley, chairperson of the Irish Council for Bioethics (ICB), regarding the recent opinion published by the council entitled The Ethical, Scientific and Legal Issues Concerning Stem Cell Research, and in reply to a joint letter from 16 Irish academics, including myself (May 10th).
The debate on the ethics of human embryonic stem cell research hinges entirely on the moral status assigned to the early human embryo. The joint letter charged that the ICB opinion "gives no valid reason" why it assigns less moral value to the embryo than to the born person. Dr Dooley denies the substance of this charge and directs readers to pages 34-41 of the ICB opinion to prove her point.
I also invite people to read this section of the document. It merely lists a wide range of the diverse opinions of many people on issues such as moral status, potentiality, personhood and human dignity, before plumping for its own position of "granting significant moral value rather than full moral status to human embryos".
The ICB opinion does not tell us how and why its authors were unanimously persuaded to come to that conclusion and I remain happy to stand over the charge made in our joint letter of May 10th. - Yours, etc,
Prof WILLIAM REVILLE, Biochemistry Department, UCC, Cork.