France’s parliament opened debate on revising
its bioethics laws on Tuesday amid protests that Catholic Church
lobbying had thwarted plans to ease the existing curbs on embryonic stem
cell research.
The
bill, originally meant to update a 2004 law in light of rapid advances
in the science of procreation, would also uphold bans on surrogate
motherhood and assisted procreation for gays.
The
debate coincided with news of France’s first “saviour sibling,” a
designer baby conceived in vitro to provide stem cells to treat a
brother suffering from a severe blood disorder.
Critics
of the bill said last-minute changes by deputies of the governing
conservative UMP party meant the revision would hardly change the
restrictive law currently on the books.
The
text retains tight limits for research on embryonic stem cells, a
technology the Catholic Church vigourously opposes because the in-vitro
fertilisation (IVF) method used to produce them creates extra embryos
that are later discarded.
“The
Catholics have succeeded in imposing their view on embryos and seem to
be succeeding in their attack on this method,” said Francois Olivennes, a
leading fertility expert.
“We propose the authorisation” of this research, said Alain Claeys, a deputy from the opposition Socialist Party.
The
French Catholic Church has made bioethics a priority issue and overseen
reports, public meetings and lobbying efforts to oppose an easing and
aim for a tightening of the current law.
The
bill does not meet all the Church’s demands. Among other things, it
supports prenatal screening for Down’s syndrome, which if found usually
leads to an abortion.
People are not instruments
Olivennes
said the bill, which bans embryonic stem cell research in all but a few
specific cases, tightened the 2004 law because it permitted production
of only three embryos rather than the unlimited number allowed until
now.
“We
already have a very retrograde law compared to those in Spain, Britain,
Belgium, Netherlands and all of Scandinavia,” he said. “Nothing is
advancing.”
Paris
Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois kept up Catholic criticism of controversial
new medical techniques, saying the “saviour baby” whose birth was
announced on Tuesday was produced to be used to heal another child.
“Are
we going to become instruments? I’m completely opposed to that,” he
said.
Ten other bishops issued a statement calling the technique an
ethical regression and asked: “What will the child say when it finds out
it was a ‘designer baby’?”
The
bill, due to be voted on next week, looked set to pass because of the
government’s majority.
Conservative deputies defeated an opposition bid
to legalise euthanasia last month.
Health
Minister Xavier Bertrand told the daily Liberation the bill upheld
French family values by keeping the ban on assisted procreation for gay
couples.
“I am convinced that the presence of a father and a mother is
necessary,” he said.
An
earlier draft planned to drop the secrecy surrounding donors of sperm
and eggs, but a last-minute change meant children born from donated
gametes will still not be able to find out the identities of their
anonymous biological parents.
One change the bill permits is the implantation of an embryo fertilised in vitro after the death of the father.
The daily Le Monde said the planned revision of the law was a disappointment after three years of public debate about it.
“By
not changing anything, the parliamentary majority has turned the French
bioethics laws into some of the most conservative in Europe,” it wrote
in an editorial.