President

the mother as a protagonist in the making of the new living being and of the
relationship as an element that links biology and biography, make this passage
a key anthropological threshold also from a theological point of view.
In conclusion, this connection of perspectives opens the way to the
possibility of using the embryos, formed but not yet implanted, for scientific
research purposes, but it does not intend to be an indiscriminate consent: if
human life – because this is what we are talking about – must not become
sacred, it also cannot be used at a whim, in the interest of scientific or
economical powers.
II. Specific observations.
The general observations presented above are the background to some
specific observations on particular points based on two orders of arguments.
The first refers to the evaluation of scientific research and of the reasons
presented in defence of its practicability and concludes with the statement that
“the studies on cytoplasmic hybrids at the moment are hardly justified”. But the
mere fact that the scientific proposition is, at the moment, scarcely justifiable
from the point of view of previous scientific evidence, does not imply its
immorality, but, at most, its uselessness. The connection between scientific
justification and morality of research is important in pharmacological and clinical
trials on human beings (who would be subjected to a useless risk if the protocol
was hardly scientific) and not in base research. We also want to stress that, in
the case of the experiment in question, rather than talking about scarce
scientific justification (in the previous bioethical evaluation at the end of
paragraph 2, the protocol followed in creating hybrids is described as
“sufficiently standardised”), we should talk about scarce evidence with regards
to the possibility that this experiment will reach its objectives: but the mere
circumstance that, in effect, an innovative proposition cannot demonstrate any
scientific evidence that is already established, cannot be a reason to condemn
such proposition. From the point of view of the internal criteria governing
scientific research, it would be a contradiction to state that a proposition that is
not yet referenced by evidence must not, only for this reason, be pursued: this
would be the same as saying that no innovative research can ever be
undertaken. In 1980 the Nobel Prize Mario Capecchi was refused funding for
his research on homologous recombination by the NIH, as they were
considered “unworthy of being pursued”. Capecchi did now allow this to
discourage him and, some years later, granting him the funding, the NIH stated:
“We are happy that you did not pay attention to our assessment” 71 .
To these evaluations about the scientific value of the research in previous
bioethical assessments, we add a critique of the reasons given by researchers
in defence of its practicability. In reality, these are ideas taken from the
consultation promoted by the HFEA – that cannot directly be attributed to the
researchers in question – in the course of which some have voiced the fear
(see letter a) that, once this practice is made legitimate, we could give into the
temptation of aiming to “liberalise other forms of interspecies fertilisation” and to
“transfer such hybrid cellular populations into the human or into the animal
body”: aims that in addition, if realised, would be a crime according to the
current English legislation, as already recalled.
71 S. Simple, “Scientist Profile: Mario Capecchi, Ph.D.”, Genetic Science Learning Center,
University of Utah: www.gslc.genetics.utah.edu/features/capecchi/.
36