CHIMERA: the term evokes a phantasm of insubstantial fancies and illusions. It also conjures an image of a beast in classical mythology, having the head of a lion upon the body of a goat, with the tail of a serpent. Now these two concepts have merged into one nightmare for humanity, courtesy of the scientific establishment and its willing helots in the Government and the "progressive" media.
Last week the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) approved the creation of hybrid human-animal embryos, so-called "chimeras", for research purposes. It was the moment when Britons renounced their unique dignity as human beings and for
mally joined the animal world: a marriage has been arranged between homo sapiens and the beasts of the field. The Island Of Dr Moreau, the science fiction novel written by H G Wells in 1896 about a mad scientist creating human-animal hybrids, has become reality.
The manipulators of society have been busy in the smoke-free rooms. Last December a Government White Paper proposed to ban the obscenity that the HFEA has just approved. This outraged the powerful biotechnology industry and the many scientists dependent on that gravy train. So they intimidated the clowns at Westminster until the Human Tissue and Embryos Bill was amended, to permit cytoplasmic embryos and chimeras - human embryos altered by the introduction of animal cells. In this Midsummer Night's Nightmare, Puck the scientist put an ass's head on Bottom, the 21st-century Briton.
Last week's HFEA ruling complemented this legislation. The HFEA is a grotesque phenomenon. A quango of 19 people with power of mass life or death is an outrage against accountability. Nor is it an objective referee, as its personnel history demonstrates. Ann Furedi, formerly of the HFEA, is now chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), the biggest abortion provider in the UK. Vishnee Sauntoo, also formerly of the HFEA, became PR Manager of BPAS. Juliet Tizzard, former director of the Progress Educational Trust which, in her words, "exists to make sure that access to new technologies is not restricted by Parliament or by doctors", is deputy head of policy at the HFEA. Were they likely to impose restraints on embryo exploitation?
As usual, last week's announcement was sanitised by mendacious claims anent the prospective curing of motor neurone disease, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's - when the true agenda was to enable scientists to play God. We have heard all this before: to justify embryonic stem cell experiments, which have not found a cure for a single disease, while ethically uncontroversial adult stem cell research has already enabled cures in more than 70 illnesses. The presentational ploy is to represent obscene research as life-giving, when it is actually promoting the culture of death.
It began with the legalisation of abortion in 1967. Today, the total of British abortions has reached seven million, which seems an awful lot of the exceptional, last-resort cases that David Steel assured us would be the beneficiaries of his Private Member's Bill. A favourite claim in the pro-death camp then was that the legislation would actually reduce the number of abortions. Today, society has become anaesthetised to the mass butchery practised in discreet privacy behind clinic walls.
Then came in vitro fertilisation. This presented the propagandists with splendid opportunities. While no photographic image helpful to their cause could be generated by an abortion clinic, pictures of happily gurgling IVF babies replaced the yuk factor with the Awww! reaction. Despite an 80% failure rate, 68,000 IVF babies have been born in Britain since 1978. What is less publicly dwelled on is the fact that this has been accompanied by the destruction of 1.2 million human embryos.
Science has no conscience. It is, quite literally, amoral. The only ethic it knows is the relentless drive to explore further, to "push the boundaries". In this mania it is as single-minded as militant Islam. It is as ruthless too and as self-righteous. Any individual, institution or government that attempts to impose the slightest restraint upon its activities is subject to instant fatwa, to condemnation as obscurantist, a threat to civilisation and callously prepared to prevent the curing of diseases and most of the other ills that afflict mankind.
In a developed world that has lost faith in Christianity, science is the new religion and its practitioners are the new priesthood; the white laboratory coat has supplanted the surplice as the vestment of sacred ministry. Militant atheists who sneer at the spectacle of Sicilian peasants kissing the hand of a priest will accord unquestioning homage to an eminent scientist.
As a consequence of politicians' peasant faith in their white-coated magi, humanity is being debased. From the moment an ovum is fertilised by a sperm a human being comes into existence. This has been recognised by the science of embryology since 1883. Weasel-worded new terminology such as "pre-embryo", to dehumanise that tiny creature during the first 14 days of its existence, for the convenience of researchers, is black propaganda. The embryo is as human on its 14th day of life as on its 15th. Its nature does not change and its nature is human.
Yet all laboratory embryos not implanted in a womb are doomed to die, often as a result of eugenic selection. The patronising excuses of apologists ("It's smaller than a pin-head" - Oh, please!) insult the public's intelligence as much as they degrade the human embryo. The nightmare is advancing by gradualism: each permissive concession is accompanied by the familiar hypocrisies: "only under strictly controlled conditions", "under no circumstances would we permit..." And the next step invariably is to license what was previously declared unthinkable.
So last week's emphatic insistence that hybrids created by fertilising a human egg with animal sperm will remain banned is a useful signal that this is the next enormity we can expect to see legalised after a decent interval. Remember these degrading realities when next Gordon Brown, with his smile resembling the glint of moonlight on a Covenanter's grave, touts his son-of-the-manse morality. It is appropriate a whited sepulchre should dominate Dr Moreau's other island.
The full article contains 1035 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
