Reproductive medicine is well known for pushing back the boundaries of parenthood. It became clear just how far they can stretch this week when the birth of twins at a Leicester clinic was highlighted in the journal Reproductive Biomedicine Online.
An infertile couple who sought treatment with donated embryos found that the woman was unable to carry them to term herself. In “a very unusual arrangement”, they then engaged her mother as a surrogate and have now adopted the babies after waiting three years for High Court approval. The children have become known as the first with five parents.
The reaction from some quarters has been predictable: one pro-life pressure group pronounced the birth a symptom of “the total disintegration of social and family values”. In fact, it raises no fresh moral issues. Both embryo donation and surrogacy are accepted methods of helping the infertile; all that has been done differently is to combine the two. The donors and the surrogate were volunteers and neither made any claim to the twins. All that is remarkable is the time taken by the courts to reach an obvious decision.
However clear the ethical background, though, such cases leave many people uneasy about the progress of embryology. In particular, they remind us of the unnaturalness of it all. With more than a million babies born through IVF, it’s easy to forget the manipulation of human biology that’s involved. It takes exceptional circumstances such as these to make it plain.
A similar example was set out yesterday in the journal Science by two bioethicists, Giuseppe Testa and John Harris. One of the most exciting potential applications of embryonic stem cell technology is the prospect of making artificial sperm and eggs, helping men and women who produce none of their own to have genetically related offspring. The implications, though, do not stop there. Once certain technical barriers are overcome, this procedure could also allow homosexual couples to have a child that carries both partners’ genes.
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This possibility is certain to inspire intense debate. Many people will be opposed on religious grounds, while others will be concerned about the safety of the procedure and the social stigma such children might endure. Many of the strongest objections, however, will emerge from the idea that doing this somehow violates Nature.
The concept of the natural is often invoked as a trump card in scientific debates. Fertility treatment, therapeutic cloning and GM crops amount to “meddling with Nature”, while “natural remedies” based on herbs are widely considered safer and more gentle than synthetic drugs.
Nature, however, is a poor foundation for ethics. Natural is not a synonym for good. Unassisted heterosexual conception may be natural, but so are cancer and Aids.
St John’s Wort may be natural, but so are deadly nightshade, cyanide and strychnine. Rape, murder and infanticide are all common among animals. A morality based on Nature would be cruel indeed.
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When it comes to medicine, the question of what is natural becomes more irrelevant than ever. “There is no a priori reason to prefer the natural, for the natural per se is morally neutral,” Testa and Harris say. “The whole practice of modern medicine is a comprehensive attempt to frustrate the course of Nature. If we always preferred the natural as a matter of principle, we would have to abjure medicine altogether.”
There’s nothing wrong with sensible and reasoned debate about the ethical implications of scientific advances. We should consider whether they’re safe and necessary, and whether there might be unintended consequences. But Mother Nature is best kept out of it. Those who invoke her seldom contribute to rational argument.
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Mark Henderson is The Times science correspondent