THE WELCOME report of the Irish Council for Bioethics (ICB) into the ethics of hugely promising stem-cell research recommends that, under close regulatory supervision, and with informed consent, limited embryonic stem-cell research (ESCR) should be legalised.
In a well-argued review of the ethical backdrop to the issue, it firmly rejects the harvesting of cells from embryos specifically produced for the purpose, insisting that scientists should instead rely on embryonic cells from "supernumary" embryos from in-vitro fertilisation (IVF). These early embryos are routinely produced in IVF to enhance the prospects of implantation, but are often surplus to the needs of the process and then destroyed.
The medical potential of stem-cell research is not at issue, but the sourcing and efficacy of such cells, either from six-day-old embryos or the uncontroversial, but less pliable, "adult" cells, remains divisive. Recent advances show huge promise but it will be some time before they provide an alternative to embryonic cells.
The independent, State-funded ICB, set up to look at ethical issues raised by scientific advances, has struck a half-way position between prohibition and complete liberalisation. In doing so it echoes the 2005 report of the Government's Committee on Assisted Reproduction. Both also warn, with justification, that until a regulatory regime is given a statutory basis the legal position of such research remains dangerously unclear.
The ICB's welcome recognition of the unacceptability of harvesting stem cells from embryos specifically produced for research, effectively turns the debate about ESCR into one about the ethics of in-vitro fertilisation. If it is acceptable to produce, and then discard, surplus embryos in IVF, then the extraction of stem cells from such embryos for life-saving research is surely the moral equivalent of the harvesting of organs from, say, a road crash victim to provide a heart to someone who otherwise might die. Many family members approving such transplants testify to their sense that the gift at the moment of death is life-enhancing, a pro-life act. The use of cells from an otherwise doomed early embryo is surely ethically equivalent and equally life-enhancing.
The central moral argument turns then on whether it is right to offer couples a chance to have children through a process which, with current techniques, involves the destruction of surplus early embryos. In truth, despite church opposition, IVF has wide public acceptance - there are nine clinics in Ireland. And such acceptance does not reflect a disregard for the sanctity of life, but what the council persuasively endorses as a morally nuanced "gradualist" view that, although the early embryo is "life", it has not acquired yet the essential qualities of personhood which vest in it the same full moral standing as a developed foetus or a born child.
This issue, in constitutional form - whether the term and protection for the "unborn" applies to an IVF embryo - is currently being reviewed by the Supreme Court. It would be a pity if the court cut the ground from both the valuable practice of IVF and the possibility of limited, regulated embryonic stem-cell research.