CHOOSE LIFE

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CHOOSE LIFE!
One Bill Too Many www.davidalton.com
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Human Fertilisation and Embryos Bill 2008

• Animal-Human Hybrid Embryos (human admixed
  embryos).
• Creation of Saviour Sibling Babies,
• Removal of the need for a father
• Creation of a National Bio-Ethics Commission
• Attempts to be made to further extend the
  abortion laws

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Key Arguments About The Proposals

• 2.2 million human embryos created for IVF and/or
  experiments since 1990
• Not a single cure or therapy anywhere in the
  world using embryonic stem cells
• 80 therapies and 350 clinical trials using adult
  stem cells
• Prison sentences of 10 years in other countries
  for doing what we permit.
• Animal-human hybrids cross species and cross a
  new line.

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Warnock Committee -1986 special status of the
embryo respect
Destructive Experiments on the Human Embryo
Since 1990 over two million human embryos
destroyed or experimented upon in UK human
cloning made legal.
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What we knowwhen life begins
Scientific Opinion
Nature Magazine July 2002 Your destiny from
day one Your world was shaped in the first 24
Hours after conception. Where your head and feet
would sprout, and which side would form your back
and which your belly, were being defined in the
minutes and hours after sperm and egg united.
Life should be protected from the very outset
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Experimentation Paved The Way For Therapeutic
Cloning Which Paved The Way For Animal Human
Hybrids

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It is cannibalistic to breed a human being, only
to kill it, disembowel it and impregnate
something with it Hubert Hueppe, Deputy
Chairman German Reichstag Committee
Do we need to do it? Are there ethical
alternatives?

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And there are alternatives to embryo
experimentation and cloning

• It is simply a lie to suggest that those who
  oppose experimentation and cloning are
  anti-science or in favour of suffering and pain
• Proponents are cultivating a mass deceit
• Good science and good ethics must march hand in
  hand.

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Support the alternatives
Simply not accurate to say that embryonic stem
cells have an immediate therapy potential.
Professor Neil Scolding, Frenchay Hospital,
Bristol, UK Adult stem cells offer far greater
potential for cures Dr.Phil Jones, Oxford
University as much if not more therapeutic
potential than those derived from embryos
Dr.Michael Antoniou, head of nuclear biology at
Guys Hospital, London
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Evidence To Parliament On Animal Human Hybrids

• Dr Lovell-Badge said
• I cannot think of a good experiment to do now
  but I am sure someone will think of a good
  experiment.
• Professor Bobrow said
• We are also not aware of any pressing scientific
  reasons at the moment for creating such entities,
  but who knows what tomorrow might bring?
• Professor Smith said
• At the present time we have not been able to
  identify such a particular reason
• to make true hybrids
• but that does not mean that they do not already
  exist and that there are not people already in
  the scientific community who would have
  appropriate grounds or that they would come along
  in the future.

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Scientific Evidence To Parliament

• The new Nobel Laureate, Sir Martin Evans, who
  originally discovered mouse embryonic stem cells
  a couple of decades ago, recently said
• The writing is on the wall for stem cell
  research that depends on using human embryos.
• Sir Liam Donaldson, Chief Medical Officer, said
  in his evidence Parliament, on 6 June 2007,
  concerning true hybrids
• There was no clear scientific argument as to why
  you would want to do it, and, secondly, a feeling
  that this would be a step too far as far as the
  public are concerned.

A Step Too Far
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An Ethical AlternativeNew Scientist December
15th 2007

• the method, which involves inserting genetic
  material that makes the cells development run
  backwards, opens the door to stem cells specific
  to patients, which could be used to repair
  damaged organs or fight diseases such as
  Parkinsons and diabetescrucially, all without
  the need to destroy human embryos.

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Professor Shinya Yamanaka

• When I saw the embryo, I suddenly realized
• this was after he looked down his microscope
• there was such a small difference between it and
  my daughters ... I thought, we cant keep
  destroying embryos for our research. There must
  be another way.

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An ethical alternative

• Many sources of stem cells, cord blood in current
  use
• Umbilical cord blood most promising for future
  and readily available
• New branch of science and medicine
• The therapy of the 21st century

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The Hunt Test

• the 1990 Act already provides the answer to the
  question of what happens if and when research
  into adult cells overtakes research using
  embryos embryonic research would have to stop
  because the use of embryos would no longer be
  necessary for that research.Official Report,
  22/1/01 col. 120.

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Bill also permits creation of Saviour Siblings

• The Bill does not limit which tissue can be used
  in the treatment of a sibling ... and the Human
  Tissue Authority must approve any transplants
  involving organs from living donors and for
  children who are too young to give
  consent.Official Report, 21/11/07 col. 869.
• Deleted organs inserted other tissue
• Life threatening becomes serious

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Saviour Siblings and Tissue Typing

• Morbidity rates and mortality rates high
• Psychological and emotional pressure
• Tissue typing is a life sentence
• The end gameof Dr Simon Fishel, the IVF expert,
  is looking forward to creating kidney donors. He
  is an HFEA peer reviewer, an external examiner
  and an inspector. Clearly, therefore, we would be
  imprudent simply to rely on the HFEA to stop
  embryos being tissue typed to create organ or
  part-organ donors.
• Alternatives cord blood, umbilical cord.

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O Brave New World.

• In 1623, in The Tempest, Shakespeare crafted a
  line that is spoken by Miranda 300 years later
  it was used, ironically, by Huxley.Miranda is
  taken in by what she thinks is the beauty of
  mankind and explains
• O brave new world that has such people in it.
• However, she does not realise that those wondrous
  people have, of course, killed her father. There
  is nothing brave and nothing good in breeding
  babies in order to raid their bodies and risk
  their lives

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Fiction Becoming Fact

• In 1943 C.S Lewis published his prophetic
  polemic, The Abolition of Man, and, in 1945, his
  futuristic work, That Hideous Strength. He
  foresaw what he described as technological
  brutalism, just as Huxley foresaw a world
  populated from vast hatcheries and peopled with
  entities with intelligences ranging from alpha to
  epsilon. Even before Lewis and Huxley, in 1896,
  HG Wells published The Island of Dr Moreau. Dr
  Moreau, who specialised in creating animal-human
  hybrids, says
• I went on with this research just the way it led
  me ... I have never troubled about the ethics of
  the matter.
• Instructively, Lord Feverstone, the creator of
  the National Institute for Coordinated
  Experiments in That Hideous Strength and a
  fictional Member the House of Lords, says that
  his aim is Quite simple and obvious things, at
  firststerilization of the unfit, liquidation of
  backward races ... selective breeding.
• Ultimately, he will create A new type of man.
• Is This What We Want?
• To sleep-walk into provisions that might have
  irreversible effects, and to do so in the absence
  of a legislative, ethical and regulatory
  framework, would be a dereliction of our duty.

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The Burglar and The Watchdog

• The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority

difficult for anyone who believed in the
sanctity of human life from fertilisation to be
appointed to the HFEA.
The need for the creation of a National
Bio-Ethics Commission
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Attempt to be made to extend the Abortion Act

• Removal of the two doctors requirement
• Nurses and midwives forced to undertake abortions
• GPs surgeries to be used for abortions
• No change to upper time limit
• Act to be extended to Northern Ireland

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What is it we permit?
Since 1967
7 Million abortions in the UK 187,000
annually 600 every working day 98 performed
under the social clause
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What we permit but what the Broadcasters rarely
allow you to see
The feet of a 10 week old aborted child
A child aborted at 11 weeks
A child aborted at 24 weeks
A child aborted at 21 weeks
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Dr.K.S.Anand and others new evidence on Foetal
Pain. Channel Four Despatches, October 2007.

• Whereas evidence for conscious pain perception
  is indirect, evidence for the subconscious
  incorporation of pain into neurological
  development and plasticity is incontrovertible.
  Scientific data, not religious or political
  conviction, should guide the desperately needed
  research in this field. In the meantime, it seems
  prudent to avoid pain during gestation.

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What We Know - when life begins
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What we know when life begins

The unborn baby at 18 weeks gestation
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When We Know when life begins.
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What is it we permit?
Since 1990
Abortion up to birth on the handicapped Up to 24
weeks gestation on the able bodied
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Revd. Joanna Jepson
What is it we permit?

• 26 abortions for cleft palate have taken place
  since 1995, two of which were after 24 weeks.

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Samuel Armas, born 2003 Surgeon Dr.Joseph Bruner
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Samuel and Zachary - 2006
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What we believe
For you created my innermost being You knit me
together in my Mothers womb. I praise you
because I am fearfully and wonderfully made Your
works are wonderful I know that full well. My
frame was not hidden from you When I was made in
the secret Place. When I was woven together in
the depths of the earth, Your eyes saw my
unformed body. All the days ordained for me were
written in your book Before one of them came to
be. Psalm 139 13-16.
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What we believe

• 'it is impossible to view abortion as anything
  other than the deliberate termination of a human
  life.'
• Rowan Williams,
• Archbishop of Canterbury

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What we believe
Moral issues like abortion and euthanasia, which
had always been subject to an overriding sense of
the sacredness, or otherness, or givenness of
life, are now reduced to property rights the
right freely to dispose of what one owns, from a
foetus to a life. Dr. Jonathan Sacks, the
Chief Rabbi of the UK.
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What we believe
Life is the most beautiful gift of God. That is
why it is so painful to see what is happening
today in so many places around the world life is
being deliberately destroyed by war, by violence,
by abortion. I have often said, and am sure of
it, that the greatest destroyer of peace in the
world today is abortion. -Mother Teresa of
Calcutta
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What We believe

• Destruction of the embryo in the mothers womb
  is a violation of the right to live which God has
  bestowedThe simple fact is that God certainly
  intended to create a human being and that this
  nascent human being has been deliberately
  deprived of his life. And that is nothing but
  murder.
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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What They Believe
1935 No society should allow the diseased,
the racially-negligent, the careless, the
feeble-minded, the very lowest and worst members
of the community to produce innumerable tens of
thousands of warped and inferior infants.
Marie Stopes
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What We Can Do

Intelligently Inform Ourselves and Take A Stand
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What We Can Do Promote The Alternatives
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What We Can Do
TAKE POLITICAL ACTION. Only Vote For Those Who
Vote For Life G E T I N V O L V E D
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What You Can Do
The person who saves a single life saves the world
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Gods Challenge
I have set before you life and death, blessings
and curses. Now choose life, that you and your
children may live. - Deuteronomy 3019
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CHOOSE
LIFE!
www.davidalton.com www.passionforlife.org.uk