Sermon Archive
Stem cell research - A Christian Response
Sermon preached by Kenneth Boyd at Matins on 13 April 2008
Acts 2.42-47 ; 1 Peter 2.19-25 ; John 10.1-10
Reading the Gospel lesson we have just heard, about the good shepherd and rival impostors, I was uneasily reminded of the headline in last Wednesday’s Scotsman: ‘Church leaders clash over embryos’. Fortunately, today’s other lessons, from Acts and the letter of St Peter, helped to put this in perspective.
The article in the Scotsman reported that the Scottish Episcopal Bishop of Aberdeen and Orkney, Robert Gillies, had publicly expressed his disagreement with the recent comments of the Scottish Roman Catholic Cardinal, Keith O’Brien, on the UK Government’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. In his Easter Sunday sermon, the Cardinal had described the bill as ‘a monstrous attack on human rights, human dignity and human life’: it represented, he said, ‘public government endorsement of experiments of Frankenstein proportion’. What the Cardinal particularly had in mind was a proposal to allow scientists to insert human genetic material into animal eggs, thereby creating what are called ‘hybrid embryos’, as part of their research into diseases and their treatment. Bishop Gillies, while admitting that he did ‘not like the thought of hybrid embryos’, replied that this research currently offered the ‘best option’ of finding treatments for ‘wickedly crippling diseases such as Huntington’s or muscular dystrophy’; and that provided such research continued to be strictly regulated as the Government bill proposed, ‘perhaps that is the way we must go to help those most in need of a Christian loving response’.
Who was right, the Bishop or the Cardinal? Was one a good shepherd of the church and the other an impostor? The Scotsman article rather tempted you to think that way. It was illustrated by full length photographs of the two ecclesiastics in their chasubles, wearing mitres on their heads, and each holding a gilded crook, the Cardinal in the right corner, the Bishop in the left corner. All it needed to set them at one another was the Moderator of the Church of Scotland to ring a bell and shout ‘round one’. But happily there was no need for that. The Bishop’s remarks were respectful and reasonable. The Cardinal had ended his sermon, or at least the part of it printed in the paper, with the equally reasonable idea that we needed a ‘permanent statutory national bioethics commission’ to examine moral issues of this kind before they became too politicised.
No big fight then, but still a substantial disagreement. Leaving denominational loyalties aside, what do we make of it? What are the scientific and what are the moral issues involved? The scientific issues, it has to be said, are quite complex. Let me try very briefly to summarise them.
Medical researchers today are trying to find new ways of treating and possibly curing currently untreatable, debilitating and deadly diseases. They hope to do this by genetically manipulating the natural means by which our bodies grow, and when they are damaged, repair themselves. A key role in this is played by what are called stem cells, cells which make and replace the other cells of which our bodies are made up. By learning more about how they do this, it might become possible to genetically manipulate stem cells so that they repair or regenerate diseased or damaged parts of the body. But to move toward this, scientists need to do a great deal more research on stem cells.
None of this research is morally controversial, except perhaps the use of animals in some experiments. What is controversial is that until recently, the only way in which scientists could get suitable stem cells to study was by extracting them from embryos. The embryos involved are made up of a small number of cells, at the earliest stage of life, after an egg has been fertilised by sperm, and before the embryo is implanted in the womb, a week or so later. In the course of nature, up to half of all embryos die or are lost before getting to the stage of being implanted in the womb. The embryos from which the stem cells are extracted are either donated by women or created in the laboratory from sperm and eggs. When the stem cells are extracted, these embryos also die.
Until recently, embryos were the only source of suitable stem cells for researchers to study. But in just the last few months, scientists have developed a technique which, by genetically manipulating other cells in the body, provides stem cells without the need to extract them from embryos. Some leading researchers think that the stem cells provided by this new technique will be suitable for their own particular scientific work, and have decided to give up using cells extracted from embryos. But other leading researchers are not convinced that the stem cells provided by this new technique will be suitable for all aspects of the scientific work that needs to be done, and think that it is still necessary to use stem cells extracted from embryos, and also, to take other aspects of their research forward, to create the hybrid embryos the Cardinal is so opposed to. But while these researchers may disagree on a continuing need to extract stem cells from embryos, their disagreement is mainly on scientific grounds.
Now the Cardinal, and the Roman Catholic Church, believe that such disagreements should be resolved not just on scientific, but also on moral grounds. On that, surely, they are correct. But are they correct in arguing that, on moral grounds, not only the creation of hybrid embryos, but also all use of human embryos in scientific research should be prohibited? They have both a theological and a philosophical argument for saying this. Their theological argument is profoundly and undeniably Christian. It is that those to whom we should afford the greatest care and protection are the most poor and defenceless of God’s children. Their philosophical argument is that this applies to human embryos. No-one would agree to destroy a baby to extract stem cells, but every baby was once an embryo, so destroying an embryo is destroying a human life with the potential to become a baby, which cannot be right. Is that argument correct? The most one can say from the innumerable philosophical papers on the subject is that it is ‘not proven’. Against it also, is what seems to be Bishop Gillies’ interpretation of the theological argument: that the most poor and defenceless of God’s children to whom we should afford the greatest care and protection, are those who in the future will suffer, not least in childhood, from the currently untreatable, debilitating and deadly diseases, for which stem cell research might find treatments or a cure.
These arguments can, and no doubt will, go on indefinitely, for there are strengths and weaknesses on both sides. Perhaps that is sufficient to show that neither the Cardinal nor the Bishop is an impostor in terms of today’s Gospel. Each in his own way, I think, is trying to work out the implications of the words of their common Lord, with which that Gospel ends: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” If we remember nothing else from this morning, these are the words we need to write on our hearts, to help us rise to every occasion, and trace the rainbow through this April’s rain.
But finally, let me go back to what I said at the beginning about today’s other lessons, from Acts and the letter of St Peter, helping to put this ‘clash’ of church leaders in perspective. I’ve tried to avoid coming down too much on one side or the other of that clash, but I think that these two lessons tell us something important about how we might try to understand these morally difficult issues.
The reading from St Peter’s letter was about following Christ’s non-violent and ungrudging response to injustice and suffering, and trusting in God’s justice and mercy alone. This is good advice for everyone, but if you were following the reading in a Bible, you might have noticed to whom this advice originally was given. The verse immediately before the one with which the reading began, says: ‘Slaves, accept the authority of your masters with all deference, not only those who are kind and gentle, but also those who are harsh’. That verse may have given many Christian slaves, at the time and across the centuries, courage and hope. But it could be, and I think also was, used to justify the institution of slavery. That, I think, is a reminder that the Bible and Tradition do not and cannot give us all the answers to morally difficult questions in our own time. We have also been given the responsibility to work out the implications of the Gospel for ourselves.
The reading from Acts is a reminder of how to work out those implications. It tells us about how the first Christians held everything in common, ‘spent much time in the temple together… broke bread at home, and ate their food with glad and generous hearts’. If we want to work out the implications of the Gospel for the morally difficult issues of our own time, that is, we need to openly share our thoughts with one another, to draw strength and direction from worship and community, and above all, to have ‘glad and generous hearts’, because we remember our Lord’s promise: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly”.