 A
morass of ethical quandaries
Specialist in reproductive medicine and bio-ethicist, Robert
Winston shocked and scared us with the test tube baby, but
we got used to it. He has seen the superhuman, but in doing so has
exposed as many questions as answers. What more has science got
to offer? Can society keep up? Will we keep getting used to it?
Robert Winston provided insights into the development of medical
science and awareness of the human reproduction. Taking the audience
on a guided tour of medical history, he spoke about the strange
things humans believed about our reproduction. One example he provided
was about the historical contention that sperm developed into a
foetus after being deposited in the uterus. That is, women played
no role in human reproduction except as an 'incubator'. This belief
was influenced by Aristotle and maintained throughout the middle
ages until the discovery of the ovum in the 17th century. The invention
of the microscope facilitated medical understanding of the human
body at a cellular level. Ethics and moral perspectives arose from
incorrect observations, where doctors were convinced that they could
see things that did not exist.
According to Winston, Medical progress was held up by a finite
idea of what was sacrosanct. Now days we do not regard the human
body as sacrosanct. We may have views about when we may do dissections
and we might anatomise. Very few people now days would object to
the notion of a well trained medical student or well trained surgeon
having access to a corpse in order to improve the treatment he might
give to a living person."
Addressing conception and ideas about human life, Winston introduced
an approach to ethics. With only 18% of menstrual cycles resulting
in pregnancy, most human embryos are not capable of becoming a foetus.
This is partly due to profound genetic defects in the majority of
embryos. Winston stated that there is a natural wastage and nature
does not regard the fertilised egg as a human being. Embryos with
chromosomal abnormalities are not ordinarily viable.
In an aging population, there is a gradual increase of degenerative
diseases. This results in the need for greater access to certain
forms of health care. In 100 years, 1% or 2 million people in the
United States will be over 100 years of age. Subsequently, crippling
diseases such as Parkinsons disease, cancer and diabetes will be
on the rise. One of the great hopes for these diseases comes from
the human embryo - the embryo can grow into every cell type in the
body. The human embryo develops and divides into all cells. Understanding
that mechanism, means we could influence it and derive cells for
human degenerative disorders.
How good are our ethics?
Winston explores these ideas further, providing insights into
scientific observation, aging and stem cell research and the ethical
issues arising.
File: winston_1.mp3 Duration: 16:08 Size: 1.2MB
Another of the ethical issues that arises is the extension of
childbearing age. For Winston, women who work and have professional
lives sacrifice their fertility by choosing to have children later
in life. Women are penalised when they seek in vitro fertilisation
in their late 30s or early 40s as they are not considered ideal
for this treatment. In this age group, the treatment is less successful
and older women are not regarded as 'good mothers'. Winston contends
that the manipulation of female reproduction to extend child bearing
age should be done. Bearing children at 50 years of age should not
be a problem because women are in better health than they were 50
or 100 years ago.
Addressing the work of Severigno Antonori, Winston states that
some people can go too far by assisting women in their 60s to have
children. Antonori recently claimed that he will clone a human being.
According to Winston, while cloning does not represent a threat
to the world, Antonori does pose a threat.
Threatening scientific probity
Here Winston explains why Antonori is a threat and concludes his
lecture by proposing that we will certainly be able to manipulate
our genetics in the next century and tamper with the human genome.
File: winston_2.mp3 Duration: 8:42 Size: 684K
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