The Polkinghorne Report on Fetal Research: nice recommendations, shame about the reasoning

Abstract

In 1989, in the wake of the first operations to transplant fetal tissue into the brains of sufferers from Parkinson's Disease, the UK Code of Practice governing the use of the fetus for research was overhauled by an eminent committee under the chairmanship of the Reverend Dr John Polkinghorne. The Polkinghorne Report has, however, attracted remarkably little comment or analysis. This paper is believed to be the first to subject it to sustained ethical and legal scrutiny. The author concludes that, although the committee's recommendations meet the major objections to the Code of Practice, the report is nevertheless vulnerable to criticism in its treatment of at least three issues: the moral status of the fetus; paternal consent to fetal use, and the ethical inter-relation of fetal use and abortion.

PIP: The first fetal tissue transplants to benefit people with Parkinson's Disease prompted the UK to create a committee in 1989 to revise the Code of Practice on the Use of Fetuses and Fetal Material for Research. The new code redresses most of the earlier code's weaknesses, resulting in acceptable recommendations. Yet, the committee's reasoning is weak regarding the moral status of the living fetus in utero before implantation and of the living fetus ex utero, parental consent, and the ethical relationship between use of the fetus and abortion. The report does not define fully-developed and/or fully-formed human being. It uses potentiality as a criterion for moral worth, but not every fetus has the potential to become a fully-developed human being. The report uses vague terms (e.g., broadly comparable). The report claims that it is unethical to use a fetus for research yet accepts a mother's consenting to nontherapeutic research on an aborted fetus. The committee does not address the objection that a woman who chooses to abort a fetus for other than serious reasons does not have the child's best interests at heart. Its reasoning for rejecting paternal consent are either incorrect or irrelevant. For example, it recognizes that tests on the fetus may have implications for the father yet decides that his consent is not needed, since his relationship with the fetus is less intimate than that of a mother--a vague conclusion. The new code states that the decision to terminate a pregnancy must be made without thinking of the benefits of using the fetus. The committee uses vague reasoning to reject the argument that abortion corrupts any beneficial use of fetal material. It is inconsistent when it objects to harmful research and abortion to produce tissue but does not object to abortion for other reasons.