October-December, 2002
December
Dr Hal Broxmeyer's team at Indiana university have discovered that
umbilical stem cells frozen for up to15 years can be thawed and used to
produce transplant tissue. It had previously been thought that they could be
used for only five years. Since there are more than 100,000 umbilical
samples stored around the world, using umbilical stem cells would avoid the
controversy and ethical conflicts that arise when stem cells are taken from
aborted children, or from embryos produced by in vitro fertilization
or cloning. [Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Daily
Telegraph]
74 year old Reginald Crew of Liverpool plans to travel to Zurich,
Switzerland in order to commit suicide with the assistance of a euthanasia
society there. Mr. Crew has motor neurone disease. The case illustrates the
importance of protection of conscience laws, since the complicity of others
is an essential feature of pro-euthanasia/assisted suicide policies.
Claims by Clonaid that a cloned child has been born has generated severe
criticism in most of the world, but Professor Sheila McLean of Glasgow
University complains that the opposition has been based on religious
grounds. She asserts that there are no convincing arguments against
reproductive cloning. Her views appear to be shared by Richard Holloway, the
former Anglican bishop of Edinburgh and primus of the Scottish Episcopal
church. He suggested that a case could be made for cloning in cases of
infertility. Professor McLean's criticism implies that religious beliefs
cannot afford a basis for public policy decisions, effectively
disenfranchising religious believers in favour of atheists and agnostics.
The Dutch supreme court has refused the appeal of Dr. Philip Sutorius from
his conviction for assisting in the suicide of an 86 year old man who was
"tired of living" but otherwise well. The original trial court found Dr
Sutorius not guilty, but an appeals court overturned the verdict. The ruling
confirms that psychological suffering cannot be cited as a reason for
euthanasia in Holland.
Duquesne Catholic University has agreed to allow freshman Lina Bird to
enroll for the spring session. Bird, a Catholic, had refused vaccines
produced from aborted fetal tissue, and the University had blocked her
spring re-enrollment. Bird was supported by the Catholic Diocese of
Pittsburgh and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). The
University has also agreed to accommodate future students.
Japan 's Society for Dying with Dignity asserts that it has 100,000 members,
three-quarters of whom are over age 65; nearly 70% are women. The news
report does not indicate what influence the society exerts in the country. (Newslink)
The House of Commons Health Committee has passed a government bill to
regulate in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and destructive research on human
embryos. The committee added amendments to ensure that IVF treatment would
be available to all women, regardless of sexual orientation or marital
status. The bill has been returned for third and final reading to the
Commons. (See
Project Submission)
Dr. Irving Weissman, a Stanford University researcher, denies that Somatic
Cell nuclear Transfer (SCNT) is a form of cloning. The statement is
connected with the university's plans to mass-produce stem cells, and is
inconsistent with the definition of SCNT used by the American Association of
Medical Colleges. It appears to be an effort to avoid ethical concerns
associated with human cloning. The experience of conscientious objectors to
the morning-after-pill among pharmacists is that marketing terminology
quickly displaces accurate scientific terminology, and that this
displacement greatly complicates the task of explaining their position to
their colleagues and the public. (Washington
Post)
The Australian and Belgian Senates have passed bills that will permit
destructive embryo research. The Belgian bill allows human cloning for
'therapeutic' purposes, and also permits the production of human embryos for
research when embryos left over from fertility treatments are not available.
"You cannot respectfully pour something down the sink-which is the fate of
the embryo after it has been used for research, or if it is not going to be
used for research or for anything else. I think that what we meant by the
rather foolish expression 'respect' was that the early embryo should never
be used frivolously for research purposes."
In these words, Baroness Warnock disavowed the term used in her report
that led to Britain's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act. Her
remarks came during a debate in the House of Lords on embryonic stem cell
research (SPUC). They demonstrate that freedom of conscience is better
secured by law than by reliance upon the favoured phrase of the moment.
A special protocol is reported to guarantee that Malta's acceptance into the
European Union would not require the country to abandon its law against
abortion. Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami announced that his government
had negotiated the protocol. (See previous item)
Those who are convinced that the legality of a procedure or the current
'ethics of the profession' warrant the suppression of freedom of conscience
in health care might reflect upon the formal apology by Oregon Governor John
Kitzhaber for a eugenics law that led to the forced sterilization of 2,500
people between 1917 and 1983. The procedure was clearly legal, and ethical
according to the dominant standard of practice at the time, yet it is
unlikely that anyone would now appeal to the law or to that standard to
justify the practice. (Newslink)
A second study, conducted by Warren Olanow, a neuroscientist at Mount Sinai
School of Medicine in New York, has demonstrated that implanting aborted
fetal tissue not only fails to ameliorate Parkinson's Disease, but produces
debilitating side effects. The replication of the findings published in the
New England Journal of Medicine in March, 2001, is expected to bring an end
to further transplants of fetal tissue, thus reducing the likelihood that
those with moral objections to the procedure will find themselves in
conflict.
Philip Nitschke plans to market what he will call an oxygen machine,
complete with chemicals that will release pure carbon monoxide into the face
mask. His intention is to provide people with a machine that will kill them
quickly if they ignore the pro forma advice not to use the CO
producing chemicals. (
Herald Sun ) Continuing pressure for legalization of assisted suicide
and euthanasia should remind people what lies ahead if freedom of conscience
for health care workers is not adequately secured.
November
Dr. Osamu Kato, director of Kato Ladies' Clinic in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward,
has invented a new fertility treatment that avoids ethical problems
associated with in vitro fertilization and artificial insemination. Ripe ova
are removed and transplanted at the back of the uterus in the path of sperm
deposited during normal intercourse. The procedure, called the ovum uterus
transplant, takes only about five minutes and is extremely cheap compared to
IVF. It is also unnecessary to use drugs to hyperstimulate the ovaries to
produce a large number of ripe ova. (Newslink)
The legalization of abortion in Peru is being opposed by the Catholic
Church. Juan Luis Cardinal Cipriani criticized a proposed amendment to the
constitution, noting that scientific evidence demonstrates that "there is
life from the first instant of conception," and asserted that to attack that
life is murder. Legalization of abortion would likely generate conflicts of
conscience among health care workers who might be expected to provide the
procedure. (Zenit)
After 18 months, and with the help of the National Right to Work Legal
Defense Foundation, school psychologist Kathleen Klamut, a Christian who
works for Ravenna City Schools, will be able to direct part of her union
dues to the American Cancer Society. Klamut made the request because the
union uses a part of dues collected to support abortion, to which she
objects for religious reasons. The Ohio Education Association (OEA) refused
her request, and she filed suit with the federal Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The Act
provides that workers with a sincere religious objection have the right to
have their union dues deferred to charity. (Newslink)
Professor Ian Wilmut, the scientist who cloned Dolly the sheep, plans to
produce human embryos by parthenogenesis. News reports indicate that the
proposed technique differs from that used to produce Dolly, though the
embryos would be genetic clones of their mother. If successful, the embryos
would be allowed to grow for a few days before being destroyed to extract
stem cells. Some are suggesting that creating human embryos by
parthenogenesis will avoid ethical concerns, since some scientists refuse to
acknowledge that embryos produced by parthenogenesis are embryos; they call
them "parthenotes". However, the distinction does not appear to be one that
will be accepted by those with moral objections to cloning. (Newslink)
The European Parliament voted 271 to 154 for an international ban on all
forms of human cloning.
John Gearhart, director of research for Johns Hopkins University's
Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, made the following statement at
said at a conference organized by the National Human Genome Research
Institute: "I am not sure these (embryonic stem) cells are going to be used
in therapies, but we are going to use the information we get out of this
research to get the patient's own cells and work with them to get them to do
what we want. This is really where I see the future now." If Gearhart is
correct, conscientious objectors involved in therapeutic work may be spared
pressure to participate in embryonic stem cell work.
In November, the secretary general of the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims
stated that the new constitution should defend life from the moment of
conception. Father Emmanuel Ngugi, a Catholic priest, pointed out that both
the bible and Koran prohibit abortion, and that that procedure is also
contrary to African traditions. (Newslink)
In a statement in the November issue of the journal Fertility and
Sterility, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine has declared
that harvesting "spare embryos" for embryonic stem cell experimentation is
ethical.
In a lecture at the University of Rhode Island, Dan W Brock a former
philosophy professor at Brown University, now a prominent bioethicist
employed by the US National Institutes of Health in Maryland, justified the
use of pre-natal genetic screening and abortion to prevent the birth of
blind or severely disabled children. Prevention is not for the sake of the
disabled child, he argued, but to minimize suffering and lost opportunities
in the world. He recommended that the self-assessment of disabled people of
their 'quality of life' be discounted as biased by their adaptation to their
disability. [Narragansett Times, 20 November]
A consultant at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle, England, has
suggested aborting an infant twin with a heart defect. The 19 year old
mother is now in the 35th week of gestation. The abortion would be performed
by injecting potassium chloride into the infant's heart, so that the dead
infant would be delivered when his twin sister was born. Physicians are
seriously divided over both the prognosis for the infant, should he be
allowed to live, and over the procedure. The hospital's medical director has
been threatened by one doctor with legal action should the procedure be
performed. [Sunday Times; The Journal] Such procedures generated
considerable controversy in Alberta, Canada, where nurses at
Foothills Hospital in Calgary complained that they had to participate in
late term abortions that resulted in some live births.
The anti-euthanasia group ALERT has released a legal opinion critical of the
Law Commission's draft Mental Incapacity Bill. Richard Gordon QC, a notable
English lawyer, expressed the view that the bill could be used to justify
euthanasia and was incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights
and the Human Rights Act 1998. The bill is related to the British
government's proposals to permit the withdrawal of food and fluids from
mentally incapacitated patients upon the direction of proxy decision makers.
Life Site News reports that a website at
http://www.hospiceforhemlock.com
claims to represent "Hospice Physicians, Nurses, Social Workers, Chaplains,
Home Health Aids and Volunteers" and to support "Euthanasia, Assisted
Suicide and Self-Deliverance." Traditional hospice work has not endorsed
such practices, but the legalization of assisted suicide in Oregon appears
to have introduced the concepts. (See
Assisted Suicide: What Role for Nurses?)
Ultrasound technician Donald Grant of New Richmond, Wisconsin, fired by
Fairview Health Services, is suing his former employer for religious
discrimination. Mr. Grant had not faced any conflicts of conscience during
15 years of performing ultrasounds because patients' charts did not include
information indicating the reason for the examination. However, when the
possibility of abortion was noted on one patient's chart, he asked her if he
could pray with her, and she agreed. He then tried to dissuade her from
having the abortion, and asked if he could give her name and number to his
pastor. His legal claim states that the patient was not offended. The
incident was the subject of a meeting with his supervisor and a personnel
representative, during which Grant explained his religious objections to
abortion and suggested that information about abortion not be included on
patient charts. Two hours later he was fired for acting "outside the scope
of his position."
The case is not strictly one of conscientious objection, which usually
takes the form of refusing to participate in a morally objectionable act.
Instead, Mr. Grant appears to be arguing that his religious or conscientious
convictions required him to dissuade the patient, and that this expression
of conscientious conviction ought to be protected in the same way as
conscientious objection. [Minneapolis
Star Tribune]
The South East Health Authority, which performs more than half of New
Brunswick's hospital abortions, will stop providing the procedure after 31
December, except in cases where the health of a mother and/or baby is at
risk. The tacit admission that abortions are not necessarily performed for
medical reasons is particularly interesting in viewof the pending civil suit
by Dr. Henry Morgentaler. Dr. Morgentaler is trying to force the provinces
of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia to pay for abortions at his private
facilities on the grounds that they are 'medically necessary.' Specialists
at the Health Authority decided to stop providing abortions because about
half the women booked for them fail to appear, while waiting lists for other
surgery are long and operating room time is being wasted. It appears that
eugenic abortions will continue to be performed at the hospital.
A 77 year old man with throat cancer travelled to Switzerland from the
United Kingdom to commit suicide at an assisted suicide facility operated by
a Swiss pro-euthanasia society. He died after taking a barbiturate on 25
October. The British Voluntary Euthanasia Society claims that the incident
demonstrates the need to make euthanasia and assisted suicide legal in the
United Kingdom. [The
Observer]
Canadian Alliance MP Maurice Vellacott has reintroduced his conscience
clause legislation in the Canadian House of Commons. In this session of
Parliament it is
Bill C-246.
October
Embryos and foetuses will be classed as "human subjects" in a charter
directing the activities of a newly established federal advisory committee
to oversee research. This is not the same as declaring them to be "human
persons", but the development is interesting.
During a trial at Turin's Sant'Anna Hospital, 400 women will take
Mifepristone (RU-486), together with misoprostol to terminate pregnancies up
to seven weeks after their last menstrual period. This may pose problems for
conscientious objectors if women present at emergency departments with
incomplete abortions, expecting physicians to finish what the drugs began.
The Canberra Times reports that euthanasia advocate Dr. Philip Nitschke is
planning acts of civil disobedience to test laws on assisted suicide. As
many as 20 people may co-operate in building carbon monoxide generators that
he expects one of them to use, inviting prosecution of the 19 survivors. The
news report states that "lack of legislation to protect people's right to
die was driving the campaign of civil disobedience and development of
euthanasia devices."
Cynthia Day, a nurse at a clinic in New Orleans, has been given assurance
that she will not be compelled to dispense the 'morning-after pill'. She had
been threatened with dismissal, but the filing of a formal complaint by the
American Center for Law and Justice appears to have ended the problem. (ACLJ
news release)
Marie Stopes International's South African programme director has complained
that provision of abortion in the country is hampered by medical staff who
are unwilling to participate in abortions. [AllAfrica.com, 26 October]
Meanwhile, South Africa's Medical Research Council has described 'unwanted
pregnancies' as a "health risk for women and their families". Professor Jack
Moodley of the MRC complains that "hostile moral attitudes of health
workers" are "one of the main factors preventing women preventing women from
gaining access to legal abortions." Among other things, he suggests that
health professionals should be educated about "the limitation of their
rights" regarding providing information and access to abortion. (MRC
news release). Doctors for Life in South Africa protested the MRC
statement, reminding the Council that a clause in the draft abortion law
that would have forced a doctor or nurse to refer patients for abortion was
dropped before the bill was voted upon in 1997. (Doctors
for Life news release) (Related
article)
Garry Breitkreuz, Member of Parliament for Yorkton-Melville (Ontario,
Canada) challenged the Minister of Health to produce evidence that abortion
was medically necessary. He sated that federal, provincial and territorial
health ministers had not completed risk/benefit analyses on abortion, and
questioned how the procedure could be said to be "medically necessary"
before the completion of those studies. He pointed out that the government
had been asked for years to produce a list of medically necessary services,
and asked if abortion was the only one on the government's list. The
argument concerns a dispute about whether or not abortions in private
clinics should be tax-paid, but is of concern for conscientious objectors
because of the implications of a formal government statement or policy that
abortion is "medically necessary".
Henry Morgentaler, who operates private abortion facilities in several
Canadian provinces, is planning to sue New Brunswick and Nova Scotia for
refusing to pay for abortions done by his operation. He claims that the
Canada Health Act requires that the abortions be paid for by the province.
Both the federal health minister and Morgentaler want to define abortion as
"medically necessary" in every case so that they will all be paid for by the
state. However, the health minister's own department was unable to produce
any evidence that abortion was medically necessary. (See
Health Canada letter) Also interesting is the fact that, in Canada,
private health care facilities are considered to be illegal, undesirable and
undeserving of public funding, but those holding this opinion seem to make
an exception in the case of abortion facilities.
Mr Gunther Verheugen, the European Union's commissioner for enlargement has
reassured the leader of the Catholic Church in Malta, Archbishop Joseph
Mercieca, that the EU will never seek to direct countries about national
abortion legislation [Times of Malta, 19 October].
Britain's General Medical Council has suspended a doctor who advised two
journalists about how to obtain a kidney transplant from a live donor and
what payment would be expected. The journalists had posed as a relative and
friend in need of a kidney transplant. The Council found that the doctor had
not participated in the trade, but that his conduct amounted to
"encouragement of the trade in human organs from live donors". The finding
is of particular interest to objectors who do not want to refer for morally
objectionable procedures, since it clearly acknowledges that moral
responsibility extends beyond active participation in an act. (Reuters)
Professor Ian Wilmut of the Roslin Institute, Edinburgh, the scientist who
cloned Dolly the sheep, intends to clone human embryos for research. While
he describes 'reproductive cloning' as unsafe and unethical, he hopes that
research on the stem cells of cloned embryos (which would cause their
destruction) could lead to treatments for a range of adult ailments. [BBC
News online, 12 October]
None of six women interviewed in
The
Guardian indicated that there were medical reasons for abortions that
they had had earlier in life; for not dissimilar reasons, they simply didn't
want to have their babies. The article also estimates that one in three
women will have an abortion during her lifetime. The article complained that
physicians opposed to abortion are "able to block access to services on the
basis of moral opposition," even though not one of the women interviewed
indicated that she had had that kind of problem.
Children of God for Life successfully intervened when the State of Illinois
attempted to deny benefits to a woman who was refusing to use vaccines
derived from aborted fetal tissue. The state was advised that parents need
not bring immunization records in order to receive benefits, nor are
theyrequired to prove that their children are immunized.
The teenage pregnancy unit at the department of health sponsored a major
survey that has found that one in four general medical practices in England
include a doctor who will not participate in abortion. [Daily Telegraph, 7
October]
Nursing Sister Sewela Ramaboea will be unable to practise as a nurse for a
year after being convicted of professional misconduct by the South African
Nursing Council (SANC). Charges against her before the hospital's
disciplinary committee had been dropped for lack of evidence. The charge
resulted from the broadcast of secretly recorded video footage in June. [See
Controversy erupts in South Africa] Among other things, the tapes showed
that patients had to remove the foetuses from their bodies themselves and
put them in waste bins because the nurses did not want to touch them. It is
possible that more nurses will be charged. The situation appears to have
arisen at least in part because the government failed to take into account
the widespread opposition to abortion among health care workers. See the
letters from Dr. Harvey Ward of Cape Town, and the text of a
survey he conducted in the Western Cape in 1997. Other relevant
background information is found in the article
No Place for Abortion in African Traditional Life - Some Reflections .