Three Person IVF

Channel 4 News did a piece on this last night, ahead of today's vote in the House of Commons on the issue. They had two spokeswomen for the new procedure and one against. The one against came over badly, although I think the edge to her voice was mostly down to nerves - the other two seemed much more practised speakers.

The issue is about preventing some very nasty diseases caused by faulty mitochondria - tiny organelles in the cell which are mostly responsible for generating the cell's energy. They are not a part of the cell nucleus, so they are not affected by the normal mixing of genes in sexual reproduction, although each does have its own small parcel of DNA. Instead they are passed directly from a mother to all her children. When mitochondria go wrong this can lead to whole families having some horrible diseases.

One thing that I don't like about media presentations of the issue is that they are less than clear about the procedures involved. The proposed amendments basically allow two different sorts of intervention in the IVF process: 'egg repair' (shown above) and 'embryo repair'. The former takes a donor egg, removes the nucleus and replaces it with the nucleus from the mother's egg. The resulting egg is then fertilised with the father's sperm.

'Embryo repair' is superficially very similar: essentially you do the same thing but with two embryos rather than two eggs. Media presentations, including Channel 4's last night, show 'egg repair' and don't mention the embryo option. The BBC - to its credit - did show both options, near the bottom of its online piece. Other reports I have seen get it completely wrong and talk about moving the healthy mitochondria into the mother's egg to replace the damaged ones; this is not what is proposed.

So what's the problem? Surely preventing horrible diseases is good. Isn't this really just another step on from standard IVF?

The issue with 'embryo repair' is straightforward, I think. It is not really repairing an embryo, so much as creating one embryo solely to be used as a carrier for another embryo's genetic material. Essentially creating embryos for use as spare parts. That is a big ethical jump, one that I find both obnoxious in itself, and scary in the options it opens up: why not remove an embryo's brain and grow it to full term as a source of replacement liver and kidneys for a rich old man, for instance? Also there are major safety concerns with what is essentially cloning technology.

'Egg repair' - again you're not actually repairing anything, more transferring a nucleus into a fresh egg - is trickier. One big objection being made is that it may not be safe. IVF itself turns out to have odd side effects which are only recently being successfully addressed, and that is a far less drastic operation.

The weakness in that argument is that having a child the 'natural' way is pretty much guaranteed to be unsafe, to pass on the mitochondrial disease. Although it is very likely that there would be unexpected side effects in the early years of such a procedure, the probability of them being worse than the original disease is low, I suspect.

The main British church groupings have spoken out against the procedure: Roman Catholics here; the Church of England official statement is here. There was recently a warning about interactions between mitochondrial and nucrlear DNA in New Scientist here; although in general British scientists seem decidedly gung-ho about leading the world in this area.

An issue briefly raised in Channel 4's piece is that this would, at best, only prevent mitochondrial disease in children conceived in this way, it is not a cure for existing sufferers. You could get the same effect if those who know they have faulty mitochondria simply did not have children. The response highlighted that this really is the old issue around IVF of 'a woman's right to have children' if she wishes.

Personally, I hope that MPs reject the 'embryo repair' option today. But on the general principle of 'three-parent' babies, I think we live in a complex time for families, and it would be better for individual Christians and local churches to focus on the point that people matter to God. All sorts of people: people with families and people without; people with genetic impairments and those without; people conceived with and without scientific help. Each and every individual person matters deeply to God; hopefully they also matter to us.

Homosexuality & The Bible

 

After Christian songwriter Vicky Beeching proclaimed in an interview in The Independent, on Thursday, "I'm gay. God loves me just the way I am", there was the expected kerfuffle in conservative Evangelical circles. Channel 4 News interviewed Beeching and US hardliner Scott Lively together, highlighting the problems.

The way Beeching (like many others) has been treated over the years is clear abuse and religious belief is no excuse for that - although do note that such abuse happens at least as much outside churches as inside, even in the US.

One common thread is the claim that the Bible condemns homosexuality. Clearly many who make this claim neither know nor care what the Bible says, but hopefully there are some who do care. So maybe a little clarification would be helpful.

There are three main passages that tend to be quoted about homosexuality, although only one, in Romans, is relevant to females:-

The first, rather depressingly, is from the ancient book of Leviticus:

Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.

I say 'rather depressingly' because Leviticus is right at the heart of the Torah, the Jewish Law. If there is one thing that a conservative evangelical ought to know it is that Jesus died to set us free from the Jewish Law, to live instead under God's grace.

Some evangelical traditions undermine that by saying that the Torah contains ceremonial laws, which are not binding on Christians, like circumcision, and moral laws which are. This is pure human tradition and directly contradicts both Jesus - who said that Torah is not to be reduced, not by so much as one jot or one tittle as the old translation puts it (Matthew 5:18) - and Paul - who wrote that those who rely on the Law must do everything written in the Law or be under a curse (Galatians 3:10). There is a choice for 'Biblical Christians': either try to follow the rules of the Jewish Law, and be condemned by it, or live in the freedom of God's grace, without putting millstones around people's necks or heavy burdens on their shoulders.

Vicky Beeching mentions Sodom and Gomorrah in her interview, but the Bible is explicit, in the book of the prophet Ezekiel, that the sin of Sodom was social injustice:

Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.

The second often quoted 'passage' is rather a series of passages: Paul's lists. Typical is the following from his first letter to the Corinthian church (in the ESV translation):

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practise homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

There is actually a translation issue here in that 'men who practise homosexuality' attempts to translate two different slang terms of uncertain meaning: roughly 'male bedders'  and 'softies'. Merging two list items into one is poor translation anyway, but anyone using this passage should be aware that the one of the terms was apparently invented by Paul, without clarification, and the other was used in different ways in Greek writings - including softies as young men who have not had an older male lover - and a general reference to male homosexuality is as much assumption as scripture.
[The above paragraph was edited 17/08/14, after some more research]

However, the main point is that these are very general lists, not just about sex. In particular they should be taken in conjunction with Jesus' warning about lust being equivalent to adultery, and anger to murder. Take the lists as a whole and we are all included; none of us are entitled to entry into the kingdom of God ... we all depend on God's grace not our own worthiness. So anyone using these lists to condemn someone else, for sexuality say, is condemning themselves. As Jesus said, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven."

Which brings us to the final passage, for now, in many ways the biggie - also the only one which mentions female homosexuality - from Paul's letter to the Romans:

For this reason God gave them up to dishonourable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

I must admit I do find this one irritating. It is well known that context is important, and the verses above are a small part of quite a long, structured passage, whose conclusion is:

Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgement on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practise the very same things. ... Because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgement will be revealed.

The Bible is absolutely clear: passing judgement on other people for their sexuality is to condemn oneself, not them. We can twist and turn and make excuses, but the point is clear. It is not homosexuality which condemns but legalism and judging others. Live in the freedom of God's grace for yourself, and allow others to do the same.

Finally, a thought from journalist Jonny Freeman, on Huffington Post:

If you're reading this and you believe you're gay, and you have a faith, do not feel ashamed. Life's for living, embrace who you are. The acceptance is growing, and one day, at last, it won't be such a big talking point.

Amen to that.

Change From Within Or Make A Stand?

Baroness Warsi has resigned from the British government today, saying that its position with regard to Gaza and Israel is "morally indefensible".

Inevitably the government, in the form of George Osborne, promptly tried to rubbish her, calling it an "unnecessary decision". The implication, argued on local radio, is that she should have remained where she had influence and could have made a difference, rather than resigning on principle.

It is, I think, a good question: when should one stay put, in order  to change things from the inside, theoretically from a position of influence, and when should one make a stand, pull out, and speak freely.

In a cabinet as wealthy, elitist, and white, as the current UK cabinet, I do have to wonder how much influence Baroness Warsi actually had. Committees, which essentially is what the cabinet is, have their own tried and trusted ways of keeping dissident voices in their place.

I watched an interview with Baroness Warsi on Channel4 News today and was impressed by her steadiness and firmness. It was clear that she has spent several weeks trying to get the UK government to engage more robustly with Israel, and was getting nowhere. As she put it, "George Osborne is a very good friend of the Israeli government".

It seems to me that the Israeli government has several 'very good friends' in high places in western governments and media, leading to a great deal of distortion in reporting and commentary. It is a pity that George Osborne, in particular, cannot be bothered to spread his friendship more to those suffering from poverty and disability within these British Isles.

In the case of Baroness Warsi, I do believe that she made the right decision. She seems to have tried to make a difference from within, not been able to achieve enough, and has therefore followed her conscience and resigned.

As a general rule though, I do also believe that you have to do things that way round. If some community or organisation is worth being a part of, then you have to be willing to work with the people within it, to make your points and to listen to other views.

Most communities and organisations which are worthwhile inevitably fall short of their own ideals - because they are composed of fallible human beings trying to work together. To pull out of something worthwhile because you do not get your own way over something has to be a last resort - what I term "the nuclear option". In other words, you do everything in your power to avoid it, but it is always there in reserve. If something is being done which is fundamentally inconsistent with what you believe to be right and true then you have to act with integrity and decency.

The impression I got today is that Baroness Warsi is a person of integrity and decency and I hope she is able to find other outlets for her talents now she has left government (at least the ministerial part of it).