Recorded on Sunday 21 October, 2012

For many years, the only hybrid human/animal embryos that

could be legally created in the UK were those resulting from fertilising

a hamster’s egg with a man’s sperm, as a means of testing male

fertility. In 2008, it became legal to create all manner of hybrid

human/animal embryos for research purposes, provided that such embryos

were destroyed within two weeks of their creation. 2012 saw the

establishment of a new £5.8million Centre for Mitochondrial Research at

Newcastle University, to develop techniques for preventing the

transmission of debilitating mitochondrial disease. But these techniques

cannot be tested in clinical trials without a change in the law, and

the government has commissioned a ‘public dialogue’ on the issue. Some

object that mitochondrial-exchange techniques involve the creation of

children with ‘three parents’, while others claim that this objection

misunderstands the relevant science.

Those involved in such debates are familiar with the ‘yuck factor’ -

the instinctive revulsion said to be felt by many, whenever the natural

order of things is interfered with. The yuck factor is an obstacle often

negotiated by appeal to scientific evidence, with tensions defused by

incorporating ethics committees and ethical considerations into the

practice and regulation of biomedicine. But while such procedures

address the feelings prompted by scientific advances, they also result

in substantive moral objections being either condescendingly dismissed

as the irrational ‘yuck’ reaction, or subordinated to the scientistic

framework of ‘evidence’. There seems to be scant room for more moral or

political arguments, either in favour of, or in opposition to,

biomedical progress.

This raises the question of how developments in biomedicine are

understood and debated by the public, and whether the public has any

meaningful input. By definition, there is no direct public input into

scientific research (which is specialised work evaluated by means of

peer review), but biomedical policy is supposedly developed under the

auspices of the broader democratic process. Such policy affects not only

the application of research once it has been conducted, but – if

research techniques are contentious, for example if they involve the use

of human embryos – whether the research is permitted to proceed at all,

much less receive public funds. How are these decisions arrived at?

What role do democracy, morality and a grasp of the actual science play

in the process? Speakers:Professor David Jonesdirector, Anscombe Bioethics Centre; co-editor, Chimera's Children: Ethical, Philosophical and Religious Perspectives on Human-Nonhuman ExperimentationProfessor Robin Lovell-Badgehead, stem cell biology and developmental genetics, National Institute for Medical ResearchKen MacLeodaward-winning science fiction writer; author, Descent, The Restoration Game and Intrusion; writer-in-residence, MA Creative Writing, Edinburgh Napier University 2013-2014Güneş Taylorresearcher, University of Oxford; MSci, Human GeneticsChair:

Sandy Starr

communications officer, Progress Educational Trust; webmaster, BioNews