Update on Life Issues - February 2014

Abortion
 

Undermining the Abortion Act 1967
Just before Christmas, the Department of Health furtively launched a consultation – it was neither announced on its website, nor via a press release.  It is entitled, ‘Procedures for the Approval of Independent Sector Places for the Termination of Pregnancy’.  Its intention is to weaken still further the provisions of the 1967 Act.

Is this a genuine consultation?  Will the Department take notice of responses?  Maybe not, because apparently new guidelines have already been drafted.  They suggest, for instance, that nurses alone can administer abortions, at least, those of the medical variety.  And that women using such abortion pills should be allowed to go home for the expulsion of the foetus.

Moreover, the guidelines propose that abortions can be authorised without patients having to see a doctor.  However, the Act insists that two doctors must decide ‘in good faith’ whether a woman requesting an abortion satisfies the terms of the Act.  This was originally included in the Act as a safeguard so that a doctor was sure his authorization was justified by obtaining the endorsement of a colleague.  It was also a protective arrangement for the woman as a safeguard against a hasty decision.  Now the proposal is that doctors can be bypassed entirely – they have merely to rubberstamp the official consent forms.  Since the vast majority of abortions are performed for mental health reasons – ground C, the ‘social clause’ – how can a proper assessment of a patient's mental health be arrived at without a doctor actually seeing the patient?  But, disturbingly, this is already happening.  Jane Ellison, a health minister, has recently admitted that only 46% (83,930) of women who had abortions under ground C during 2012, were seen by a doctor – this means that approximately 96,250 women sidestepped the Act.  The question needs asking again: Is a coach and horses being driven though the provisions of the 1967 Act?  Are most of these abortions illegal?

The Department of Health needs to ensure that the stipulations of the 1967 Act are followed, not give licence for a free-for-all.  When questioned about this debacle, a Department of Health spokesman feebly stated, ‘The law requires that two doctors certify in good faith that there are lawful grounds for any abortion.  Doctors must comply with that approach.’  So, what is the Department doing to ensure legal compliance?

Is abortion a human right?
Good question – there is no doubt that many would like the answer to be, ‘Yes.’  But on 10 December 2013, the European Parliament plenary session voted, albeit narrowly by 334 vs. 327, to defeat a resolution that would have made access to abortion a fundamental human right.  The Report on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, was put forward by Portuguese Socialist MEP, Edite Estrela.  The Report contained an aggressive pro-abortion stance.  Rather than leaving abortion as an issue to be dealt with by individual EU member states, it went much further in declaring abortion to be a human right.  Controversially, it also called for compulsory sex education at primary school level, and it challenged the right of healthcare professionals, doctors and nurses, to refuse to perform abortions because of conscientious objection.

Of course, most countries within the EU have laws which permit some abortion under specific and limited conditions.  But millions of EU citizens uphold basic pro-life principles, including the protection of all human life from conception.  In addition, many others consider that while abortion should be available as a last resort, it should not be regarded as a human right, on demand.  However, considering the narrowness of the vote and the resolve of the pro-abortion lobby, it is expected that the Estrela Report, or something similar, will resurface before too long.

The ABC, the abortion-breast cancer link
Pro-abortionists have long denied the existence of any association between abortion and breast cancer, the so-called ABC link.  Pro-lifers have long insisted that such a link exists.  New evidence from China demonstrates not only the reality of the link, but also that the cancer risk rises with each abortion a woman has.  This report has been described as a ‘real game-changer’ for ABC link deniers.

The study, entitled ‘A meta-analysis of the association between induced abortion and breast cancer risk among Chinese females’ was published in the November 2013 edition of Cancer Causes and Control.  The research was conducted by Yubei Huang and colleagues at the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Tianjin Medical University Cancer Hospital.  Chinese women have typically had lower rates of breast cancer than their Western counterparts.  However, over the last two decades, coinciding with the implementation of the Chinese one-child policy coupled with rampant abortion, rates have increased at ‘an alarming rate’.

The findings are the combined result of 36 studies, covering 16 provinces in China, and they record a ‘dose-response relationship’.  In other words, the risk of developing breast cancer is increased by 44% among women having one abortion.  This increased to 76% after two abortions and up to 89% after three.  The Chinese researchers concluded that, ‘IA [induced abortion] is significantly associated with an increased risk of breast cancer among Chinese females, and the risk of breast cancer increases as the number of IA increases.’

Two other recent, much smaller and perhaps less rigorous, studies provide some additional evidence for an ABC link among Asian women.  They show that in Bangladesh and India breast cancer risk has increased with unprecedented magnitude among women who have had induced abortions.

In Bangladesh, the paper entitled, Breast cancer and some epidemiological factors, a hospital based study, was reported by Suraiya Jabeen and co-workers in the Journal of Dhaka Medical College (2013, 22: 61-66).  It found a 20-fold increased risk for breast cancer among women with abortion histories.

And also in 2013, there was a study entitled, ‘Reproductive factors and breast cancer: A case-control study in tertiary care hospital of North India’ by A S Bhadoria and colleagues, published in the Indian Journal of Cancer (2013, 50: 316-321).  It stated, ‘History of abortion was also found to be positively associated with the risk of breast cancer with 6.26 times higher risk in women having a history of abortion.’

Now consider this.  The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in its revised 2011 review, ‘The Care of Women requesting induced abortion’ declared that ‘Women should be informed that induced abortion is not associated with an increase in breast cancer risk.’  Or consider the Q&A page from the website of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.  ‘Q. Does having an abortion really lead to breast cancer?  A. No. No. No. No. No. There is no truth to this at all.  It is one of those nasty myths invented by anti-choice organizations to frighten women away from having an abortion.’  How much longer will this sort of advice, from both sides of the Atlantic, be given?

All change at the top of the HFEA
In January 2014, Professor Lisa Jardine CBE completed her six-year undertaking as Chair (ugh!) of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA).  Reflecting on her time at the HFEA she said, ‘The efforts we have made to reduce multiple births, provide fairer compensation for donors, reduce regulatory overlap and give better access to data for researchers are just a few of the projects I am delighted to have seen implemented during my time here.  I am particularly honoured to have overseen the Medical Frontiers: debating mitochondria replacement public consultation.  It clearly demonstrated the specialised ability the HFEA has to engage, educate and communicate complex science and public opinion.’

Some would beg to differ that these were anything like notable achievements.  ‘The efforts we have made to reduce multiple births’ have been a disaster.  In 2009, the HFEA began a national strategy to cut the number of multiple births.  In 2011, it imposed sanctions on fertility clinics if they overstepped the prescribed 10% target.  Mohamed Taranissi, the notorious IVF practitioner, thought the rule was barmy and took the HFEA to court.  It lost.  The HFEA then withdrew its ill-designed policy.  The ‘compensation for donors’ was concerned partly with keeping up with inflation but also, more seriously, was a recognition that donation of human sperm, ova and embryos were items of everyday trading.  ‘Regulatory overlap’ was reduced only because the HFEA was threatened by closure or amalgamation with the Human Tissue Authority (HTA).  In the end, the Government relented and the HFEA lives on.  ‘Better access to data’ is a laugh.  HFEA statistics are often out of date and, when they are published, they are so complex and opaque that they serve little purpose.  On the other hand, I must acknowledge that HFEA staff do willingly respond to my requests for data clarification under the Freedom of Information Act (2000) – though they often take a long time to answer.  As for the public consultation over ‘three-parent’ IVF, this has generally been regarded as a farce.  The HFEA insisted that there was ‘broad support’ for authorizing the technique.  This was a flawed conclusion.  The majority of submissions opposed legalisation, but the HFEA gave unwarranted credence to opinions expressed during a limited number of its own ‘public engagement’ sessions, where the attendees were addressed by pro-‘three-parent’ IVF experts.  If Professor Jardine was ‘delighted’ and ‘honoured’ to have overseen these projects, we can be glad she did not disclose anything she was ‘forlorn’ or ‘shamed’ about during her reign.

Sally Cheshire, a long-standing member of the HFEA, has been appointed as the interim chair.  The post has been advertised and, at £37,148 to £47,360 for 2 to 3 days per week plus travel and subsistence expenses, it looks attractive.  Moral absolutists need not apply.  It is a job suited only to bioethical utilitarians and pragmatists.  You’ll see!

The lead scientist, Professor Michael Davies, stated, ‘Compared with spontaneous conceptions in couples with no record of infertility, singleton babies from assisted conception were almost twice as likely to be stillborn, more than twice as likely to be pre-term, almost three times as likely to have very low birth weight and twice as likely to die within the first 28 days of birth.’

These adverse outcomes were more common with IVF than with ICSI treatments.  Using frozen, rather than fresh, embryos eliminated all significant outcomes with ICSI but not with IVF.  Moreover, a group of infertile couples, who eventually conceived naturally, experienced even greater adverse effects with their babies.  This suggests that the problems were precipitated not only by the ART treatments per se, but rather by the underlying medical conditions that caused the infertility in all the parents.

The legal status of the human embryo
The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has decided to hear the case of Parrillo v. Italy, which will have major implications for the legal status of the human embryo.  At issue is this question: Are human embryos merely property, or do they have rights?

The case concerns Adelina Parrillo, who in 2002, at the age of 48, decided together with her husband to have children by means of IVF.  Five embryos were created and frozen for future transfer.  In 2003, the applicant lost her husband and gave up the idea of IVF.  However in 2011, Mrs Parrillo realised that a 2004 Italian law forbade the destruction of her embryos.  She applied directly to the ECHR, alleging that her ‘property rights’ over the five frozen embryos and her ‘right to private life’ were breached by this law which prohibits her from donating the embryos to scientific research, and ‘obliging her to keep them in a state of cryopreservation until they were no longer viable.’

It is most surprising that the ECHR has agreed to even consider this case, especially since the Court has previously failed to provide legal protection for human embryos.  In the past, the Court has certainly handed down some bizarre decisions.  For example, in the 2004 case of Vo v. France, the Court stated that there is ‘common ground between States that the embryo/foetus belongs to the human race.’  Yes, OK.  It further asserted that, ‘the potentiality of that being and its capacity to become a person … require protection in the name of human dignity, without making it a "person" with the "right to life"’.  Apparently the judges were not prepared to give legal protection until the embryo attained ‘personhood’, which the Court did not – of course – define.  However, the Court did manage to duck the big question by maintaining that, ‘the Court is convinced that it is neither desirable, nor even possible as matters stand, to answer in the abstract the question whether the unborn child is a person for the purposes of Article 2 of the Convention.’  It is patently obvious that the Court was determined not to assign human rights to the unborn child – that would definitely have upset the European bioethical applecart.  So the Court invented, or at least, applied the undefined criterion of ‘personhood’.

This is all contrary to the 2004 Act 40 of Italian law, which recognizes the human embryo in vitro as a ‘subject of law’ and which clearly regards the human embryo as more than mere biological material with property rights.  No hearing date for Parrillo v. Italy has been announced, and it may even be referred to the Grand Chamber for judgement, but the outcome of this case will be fascinating as well as significant.

The case of Brüstle v. Greenpeace
This has been a most unusual legal case.  Way back in September 1997, Professor Oliver Brüstle, of the University of Bonn Medical Centre, applied for a German patent on isolated and purified neural progenitor cells, which he derived from embryonic stem cells as a potential treatment for Parkinson's disease.  Brüstle’s patent request was granted, but Greenpeace objected and took legal action.  The German Federal Patent Court noted that the European Biotechnology Directive affected the patenting of stem cell developments in the EU.  Article 6 of the Directive prohibits, ‘uses of human embryos for industrial or commercial purposes’, but it does not define what it meant by ‘human embryos’.  This is where the European Court of Justice (ECJ) stepped in.  In 2011, the ECJ held that because there was no agreed definition across Member States, ‘the concept of "human embryo" … must be understood in a wide sense.’  The ECJ therefore ruled inter alia, ‘that a human embryo is any human ovum after fertilisation.’  That is to say, it is, ‘capable of commencing the process of development of a human being.’

The ECJ further ruled that, ‘In the context of a case concerning the patentability of an invention involving the production of neural precursor cells, which presupposes the use of stem cells obtained from a human embryo at the blastocyst stage, entailing the destruction of that embryo, an invention must be regarded as unpatentable.’  In other words, a patent should not be granted to an invention if it requires the prior destruction of human embryos, such as the production of human embryonic stem-cell lines.  Put more plainly, Greenpeace won, Brüstle lost.

The ‘One of Us’ European Citizens Initiative
As a consequence of the Brüstle v. Greenpeace decision, the ‘One of Us’ European Citizens’ Initiative was launched with the intention of broader, Europe-wide action to protect human embryos.  The organisers published a petition which stated, ‘The EU should establish a ban and end the financing of activities which presuppose the destruction of human embryos.’  The petition, which closed on 2 November 2013, gathered more than 1.89 million signatures from 20 countries.

During 2014, possibly in February, the ‘One of Us’ Initiative will formally present its petition to the European Commission.  The legislation it proposes, if adopted, would have the effect of retrospectively amending the Horizon 2020 Regulation, which hastily committed huge sums of funding to research projects, which will involve the destruction of human embryos.  Several MEPs have asked the Commission to institute a temporary ban on funding projects, such as embryonic stem-cell research, until the Initiative has been considered by the Commission and any subsequent legislation has been voted on by the Parliament and Council of the EU.  It is all very complex, innovative and uncertain.  Yet the battle has been enjoined and has already proved that there is considerable pro-life sentiment across Europe.

Yet another stem cell surprise - STAP cells
The story of stem-cell technologies has been one full of shock and awe.  Here is another chapter.  It has been heralded – probably with too much hype – as a ‘major scientific discovery’.  This is how the BBC described it, ‘Scientists in Japan showed stem cells can now be made quickly just by dipping blood cells into acid.’  The actual report is called ‘Stimulus-triggered fate conversion of somatic cells into pluripotency’ by Haruko Obokata and her colleagues at the Riken Center for Developmental Biology, Kobe, Japan and it is published in Nature (30 January 2014), 505: 641–647.

But here is the great caveat.  The Japanese work used mouse blood.  If – and so far, this is an entirely unknown ‘if’ – it could work with human blood, then the age of personalised reprogrammed-cell therapies may be upon us faster than we had previously thought.  Could it be the end of potential therapies based on embryonic stem cells, or even iPS cells?  Let’s wait and see – there may yet be more shock and awe around the corner.

Stem cells and organ transplants
There has always been an aspirational connection between the two entities of stem cells and organ transplants.  Now the Japanese have moved one step nearer realising the dream.  Professor Hiroshi Nagashima of Meiji University plans to create special embryos and, by transferring them into the uterus of a surrogate mother, he hopes to produce fully-grown offspring.  Here is the twist – so far, the surrogate is a pig and the special embryos are chimeric, that is, they contain genetic material from two different animals.

For example, Nagashima and his colleagues have already created a white pig that contains the pancreas of a black pig.  Using a white pig embryo, the gene for developing the pancreas is turned off.  Then stem cells from a black pig are introduced and these create a ‘black pig’ pancreas.

Professor Hiro Nakauchi of the Institute of Medical Science at the University of Tokyo (IMSUT) has gone one step further.  He has taken skin cells from an adult brown rat and converted these into induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells.  Using these he has grown a brown rat pancreas inside a white mouse.

Where is all this leading?  The goal is xenotransplantation, growing human organs inside other animals, especially pigs, to overcome the shortage of hearts, kidneys, and so on, for donation.  Xenotransplantation has been in the air for the last 50 years but with hardly any success.  Nakauchi’s ultimate goal is to be able to take human skin cells, change them into iPS cells, inject them into pig embryos and so produce organs genetically matched to the skin cell donor.  The end of transplant rejection and the end of transplant waiting list – maybe.  Numerous hurdles, biological and bioethical, are awaiting – pigs and humans are dissimilar in so many ways, and the creation of human-animal hybrids is generally illegal worldwide.  This does not look like bioethically-attractive stem-cell technology.

Here are three of the major arguments against MR.  First, this is germ-line (as opposed to somatic) genetic modification, which means it will be passed on to further generations.  It would therefore cross a previously-robust, anti-eugenic Rubicon, upheld by most jurisdictions worldwide.  Second, there has been a serious lack of animal experiments to test the efficacy of MR.  Third, this process of MR is technically very similar to somatic cell nuclear replacement (SCNT), the cloning technique.  That should in itself cause concern.  Moreover, SCNT in animals has consistently caused serious malformations in both unborn and born offspring.

The battle is enjoined
Euthanasia and assisted suicide are destined to become the dominant bioethical issues of 2014.  Lord Falconer’s private member’s Assisted Dying Bill will come before the House of Lords for its second reading some time this summer, after the new parliamentary year begins in May.  Could there be a separate Bill in the Commons, or even a parallel debate in both Houses?  A YouGov poll, conducted in April 2013, showed that 76% of adults in England and Wales support the Bill’s proposals.  And in Scotland, there will be Margo MacDonald’s Assisted Suicide (Scotland) Bill coming before the Scottish Parliament this year.  Dignity in Dying, the foremost pro-euthanasia organisation in the UK, is gearing up for its biggest campaign ever.  Expect sympathetic coverage in the mass media, personal horror stories, endorsements from celebrities, biased programmes on TV and radio, emotive letters to the press, and so on.

Indeed, the deluge has started.  On 14 January, the Sun, Britain’s most popular newspaper, came out in favour of the Falconer Bill.  The editorial stated, ‘The risks of legalisation seem tiny to us compared with the suffering it would ease.’  Under the headline, ‘Let sick Brits die like Hayley’, it announced that 73% of its readers believe that existing laws that ban assisted suicide should be changed so that terminally ill patients should get the right to end their suffering like Corrie’s Hayley Cropper.  The reference is to pancreatic cancer-stricken Hayley Cropper, a character played by Julie Hesmondhalgh, in the ITV soap opera Coronation Street.  Not incidentally, the actress is a supporter of the legalisation of assisted suicide.  On Monday 20 January, she is shown with no real help from her husband, Roy, taking a lethal cocktail of drugs and thus committing suicide, not the assisted variety.  Many are concerned that this will normalise assisted suicide.  The Samaritans are fearful that copycat suicides may follow.

So now is the time to clarify the issues in your brain – the need is urgent.  Are you ready?  One of the best resources is www.carenotkilling.org.uk  In addition, a report, published in November 2013, by three distinguished peers argues that the Falconer Bill is proposing, ‘no mere amendment of the law but a fundamental change to it’ and, ‘is asking Parliament to sign a blank cheque.’  Lord Brennan QC, the Rt Hon Baroness Butler-Sloss GBE and Lord Carlile QC CBE write that there is, ‘widespread misunderstanding and misinformation, on what the law, namely, the Suicide Act 1961, says and how it works.  Their excellent report can be accessed at www.livinganddyingwell.org.uk  I might also add that my book, The Edge of Life – Dying, Death and Euthanasia (Day One) deals with these very issues from a Christian perspective.

The Nicklinson-Martin-Lamb case at the Supreme Court
The names of Tony Nicklinson, ‘Martin’ and Paul Lamb have become synonymous with the legal battle to establish a right to end their lives at a time and in a manner of their choosing.  The case rumbles on.  On 16 December 2013, this trio of 'right-to-life' test cases finally arrived at the UK's Supreme Court before a panel of nine judges – an unprecedented number, which indicates the hearing's legal significance.  The case lasted four days and judgement is expected in early 2014.

We must have the utmost empathy and sympathy for all those who live and suffer on a daily basis.  However, the gravity and consequences of changing the law on assisted suicide or murder, whether these men and women are terminally-ill or not, whether their diseases are debilitating or not, are too great.  The outcome would be too far-reaching, too devastating for the disadvantaged, the disabled and the dying.  The floodgates to euthanasia would be opened – medical practice, legal protection and our regard for human life would never be the same again, and never safe.

Euthanasia in Belgium
Nowhere in the world has taken to euthanasia like Belgium.  Voluntary euthanasia was legalised in 2002 and ever since the Belgian situation has become worse and worse.  There have been increasing numbers and also an alarmingly-widening scope.  Officially reported cases of euthanasia have increased sixfold in ten years, from 235 in 2003 to 1,432 in 2012.  Moreover, in some parts of the country, it is reckoned that half of the cases are not reported and a third are involuntary, yet nobody has ever been prosecuted.

A decade ago, Belgians believed that their new law would uphold proper safeguards and ensure strict compliance.  Now there is euthanasia linked directly to organ harvesting (so-called organ-donation euthanasia, ODE), joint euthanasia for elderly couples, euthanasia after a botched sex-change operation, a double euthanasia for deaf twins because of their fear of failing eyesight, and euthanasia for a sexually-abused anorexic woman.  Euthanasia for psychological suffering among the non-terminally ill has become de rigueur.  And that is not all.  At the end of 2013, the Belgian Senate voted, by a massive margin of 50 to 17, to approve euthanasia for children – a measure expected to be legalized in 2014.  Also in the near future, those Belgians with dementia are likely to become eligible candidates.  And who’s next?  What about the unhappy?

On St Valentine's Day 2014, as expected, the Belgian Lower House passed the bill allowing child euthanasia by a vote of 86 to 44, with 12 abstentions.  All that now remains is for King Philippe to give it the royal assent.  Then Belgium will become the only country in the world which allows euthanasia without an age limit.  Even the Netherlands permits euthanasia for children only from the age of 12.  Proponents of the new law say that it will apply to only a few children who must been terminally ill, in great pain and with parental consent.  The short history of Belgian adult euthanasia would suggest that such safeguards will soon be overridden - children can usually be easily persuaded to please adults, especially their parents.  This new law is but the logical extension of eligibility categories - legalizing euthanasia creates an insatiable appetite for more and more.  We already bar children from making many economic and emotional decisions - and with good protective reasoning, primarily because they are childish and vulnerable.  Now, at least in Belgium, they can decide to be killed.  Something is seriously wrong here.  Tellingly, the majority of pro-euthanasia organizations around the world have fallen silent on the matter - is this Belgian move a step too far even for them?

Hobby Lobby and Obamacare
The case rolls on, slowly.  Hobby Lobby is the arts and crafts outlet owned by David Green and his family, which aims at ‘honoring the Lord’ in all it does ‘by operating the company in a manner consistent with biblical principles’.  It is arguing that Obamacare’s requirement that compulsory health insurance coverage for its employees, including access to the morning-after pill, other emergency ‘contraceptive’ methods and intrauterine devices, restricts its freedom of religion.

Hobby Lobby is not alone.  There is a string of organizations, ranging from the Little Sisters of the Poor to Wheaton College, objecting to the provisions of Obamacare.  And there is increasing opposition among the American public.  A poll, conducted during November 2013, showed that 59% of those questioned, ‘oppose the mandate requiring the coverage of preventive care services for women which includes all FDA approved contraceptives, including drugs that can destroy a human embryo, and sterilization services without a direct cost to the patient.’

On 26 November 2013, the Supreme Court announced that it will agree to hear the Hobby Lobby case. Kyle Duncan, lead lawyer for Hobby Lobby said, ‘We are hopeful that the Supreme Court will clarify once and for all that religious freedom in our country should be protected for family business owners like the Greens.’

Another of Hobby Lobby’s legal team, Joshua Hawley stated, ‘Some might say that corporate conscience is all well and good, but Hobby Lobby is attempting to impose its convictions on its employees.  But this is quite wrong.  Hobby Lobby has no objection to its employees using whatever forms of contraception they may choose.  Hobby Lobby is not asking that any contraceptive drugs be made unavailable.  It is simply asking not to be forced to pay for a handful of contraceptives that can cause abortions.’

David Green, Hobby Lobby’s founder and CEO, has said, ‘My family and I are encouraged that the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide our case.  This legal challenge has always remained about one thing and one thing only: the right of our family businesses to live out our sincere and deeply held religious convictions as guaranteed by the law and the Constitution.  Business owners should not have to choose between violating their faith and violating the law.’

It has been announced that the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments for the case of Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. on Tuesday 25 March 2014, starting at 10.00 am.

23andMe – the failure and triumph of a genetic testing kit
The road to personalized genomic medicine was always going to be long and winding, even bumpy.  Simple home testing kits, for simple diseases, like diabetes or hypercholesterolaemia, have been the first spin-offs.  Then came the bigger and wider approaches.  One of these was developed and marketed by the ambitious, Californian biotech company, 23andMe.  It produced a popular $99 testing service and about 500,000 people have bought them. Users provide their DNA by mailing a saliva sample – spit and send – to the company, which it analyses and then returns the results.  23andMe claims that this so-called Personal Genome Service (PGS) can discover the user’s predisposition to more than 250 different genetic diseases.  The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is not convinced.

Finally, here are two obituaries of people who were extraordinary for quite different reasons, yet they both have their place in bioethical history.

Frederick Sanger (1918 - 2013)
Frederick Sanger was the biochemist who was the only Briton ever to be awarded two Nobel Prizes and the only person in the world ever to win the Prize in Chemistry twice.  He has been described variously as ‘the father of genomics’, ‘one of the greatest scientists of any generation’ and a ‘real hero of twentieth-century British science’.  He was born in 1918 in Gloucester and died in Cambridge on 19 November 2013, aged 95.

He won a place at Cambridge to study medicine, following in the footsteps of his father, a general practitioner, who had worked as an Anglican medical missionary in China.  But before Frederick arrived at university he had decided that science would suit his single-minded personality more than medicine, so he switched and studied biochemistry.  He graduated from St John’s College in 1939, and went on to work for a PhD under the distinguished researcher, Albert Neuberger.  In 1943, Sanger joined the group led by A C Chibnall, the man who ‘gave’ him the job of sequencing the insulin molecule.  Sanger devised a novel method for identifying the sequence of the individual amino acids in the protein.  It took him several years, but he succeeded, and in 1958 it earned him his first Nobel Prize in Chemistry.  My research group regularly used the so-called Sanger method in my ‘other life’ as a biochemistry lecturer – and yes, it worked!

In 1962, Sanger moved to the Medical Research Council's new Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge.  There he became fascinated by the molecular structure of DNA.  The problem of sequencing DNA was even tougher than that for proteins, but by modifying his own Sanger method, he again succeeded.  And again it brought him a Nobel Prize in Chemistry.  Yet he still remained at the bench in his laboratory.  He said, ‘Most people, when they get the Prize, they get big jobs.  They become professors or directors of large groups.  I didn't because I wasn't any good at that.  But I was quite good at research.’  Some measure of his achievement is that it underpinned the methodology used in Human Genome Project.  And when the Wellcome Trust decided to build a new laboratory in Cambridge for the study of genomics they named it the Sanger Institute.