DVNutrix – I hadn’t thought of Dr Moreau, but it is a good comparison, since the novel was very clearly inspired by the anti-vivisection panic of the late 19th century, itself whipped up by pamphleteers and lurid press coverage of the activities of the early UK medical school physiologists. As Wikipedia points out, the rather fevered atmosphere of the time gave birth to the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection. Of course, it also produced the Physiological Society (founded very specifically to promote bioscience and to counter the anti-vivisectionists) and the Cruelty to Animals Act of 1876 that regulated animal experimentation. Though the Wikipedia entry on the book does not mention it, the character of Dr Moreau is widely understood to have been inspired by the great French scientist Claude Bernard.

Claire – think your description of the man from the SPUC as merely an “eejit” shows masterly restraint. “Loony” springs to mind, or that pungent Aussie expression “f*ckwit”. If I was a Latino I would call him a pendejo. As Vitaminbook says, it is in one sense amazing his own side let him spout such tripe, from which the only conclusion I can draw is that the rest of the SPUC are as barking as him – if you read their website you might well get that idea.

Personally I would say that no-one whose views are that fantastically ludicrous should get any media platform, as they are clearly a fringe loon. It is akin to saying:

“Welcome to our serious discussion on the weaknesses of the British two-party political system – our first speaker is the man from the Monster Raving Loony Party.”

Wilsontown – was sorry to see “Creepy” Kaufman voting with the pro-life gang. Though I was slightly surprised to see he was still an MP! He must surely be standing down at the next general election. He was my MP for several years a while back, and one I voted for, though never with tremendous enthusiasm. In the constituency I now live in both the former Labour MP and the current LibDem one have been pretty good about replying to letters and emails. I am oddly proud of the letter I got from the ex-Labour MP, on the posh House of Commons stationery, after I wrote to tell him I couldn’t vote for a party that was dumping eight centuries of civil liberties to impose detention without trial for terror suspects.

Kat and Claire – completely agree about the dreadful consequences of degenerative diseases, especially in the young. A lot of scientists would argue we have a moral imperative to do things like stem cell research specifically to attempt to help such people. The treatments may be a long way off, but that’s no reason to say “Oh, we won’t bother to try and work out how to do it, then”.

This argument used to turn up in the animal experimentation debate as well. There was an organisation, now sadly defunct as far as I know, called SIMR (Seriously Ill for Medical Research) which specifically used to campaign in opposition to the anti-viv groups. The point of SIMR was to point out that there are plenty of serious life-threatening diseases for which we have no good treatments, and that advances in medical science are pretty much the only hope for people like SIMR’s member, and for future sufferers.

The Guardian ran a good piece along these lines written by a lady from the Parkinsons’s society, but I’m too tired to hunt it down. The Guardian is running so many CiF pieces at the moment that the good ones simply get swamped amid a mass of pontificating journalists.

Sili – I have always regarded the twelve-week limits for abortion in Europe as a red herring in the UK context, for various reasons. First, in many countries it mainly reflects the much larger influence of the Roman Catholic Church (compared to the UK), rather than a different consensus on the medical science. Second, I doubt people have to wait ages simply through the lack of speed of the medical system, which is a problem in the UK. Third, in most countries abortions for “medical reasons” will be exempt from this twelve-week limit, and there will not be anti-abortion groups trying to peer over doctors’ and patients’ shoulder to see what exactly they list as a medical reason. Fourth, I would bet that if you have the money the prohibition on abortion after twelve weeks can be circumvented easily, simply by finding the “right” doctors. So I suspect that in practise abortions happen after twelve weeks, but they simply don’t create the fuss we get in the UK.

For whatever reason, the British debate on things like abortion takes rather little notice of the European experience. It is also notable that I didn’t hear anyone in the very premature babies discussion mention the Dutch policy on very premature births. In Holland, at least until recently, doctors were forbidden to treat any infant born prior to 26 weeks, as the argument was that if the child survived they would be so disabled that it amounted to a kind of cruelty.

PJ – thanks for the link to your excellent post from back in the Autumn. You were way ahead on all this – eerily prescient, indeed. The way that the pro-lifers have managed to front and centre the tiny, tiny number of “miracle babies”, to the almost complete exclusion of what the neonatal docs say about the dire prospects overall for the pre-24 weekers, is very depressing. And given that the ones reported are usually only the ones that are sufficiently active / big / advanced to get admitted to the NICU as having any kind of a chance…

Another thing that always strikes me, and that never seemed to get discussed, is the imprecise nature of the gestational assessment, which you wrote about in your post. In Prof John Wyatt’s study, the one Nadine Dorries thinks trumps all the other data, the dating – at least as I read it – is from the mother’s last period, hardly terribly very precise. It makes me wonder if his tiny number of “22 week survivors” – and it’s only half a dozen – are all really 23 or 23-and-a-half-weekers.

On the whole stem cells / cloning debate, I agree with Woebegone that public knowledge about all this is pretty dismal – for which I am tempted to blame the journalists, though the poor general level of scientific education is equally culpable. But where is the accurate info to come from? I wouldn’t mind so much if everybody watched The Boys from Brazil, which, although it is now thirty years old, remains one of the more scientifically accurate movies about cloning – mainly because it recognises both heredity AND environment as contributing to phenotype.

This science-fiction nonsense has to taken seriously however, because it’s the entire driving force behind the opposition to these technologies. The actual process of making a “hybrid” embryo is pretty unimpressive when it comes down to it – it’s only really of direct interest to a minority of molecular biologists. The average man in the street (or in the Commons) doesn’t understand the technology, and couldn’t tell a hybrid embryo from a bacterial colony.

But what they do understand is the idea of half-man half-chimps walking around, or someone cloning Hitler, or creating babies purely to harvest their organs before putting them into a deep freeze. I’ve come to think that this kind of thing is the sole reason that most people care about biotechnology at all – which is a little depressing.

So- you’d think the Pro-Lifers would have been happy.

No.

The anti-abortionists* will never be happy. Ever.

I made the mistake of trying to tune into the debate when I noticed Goldacre’d miniblogged the link – managed to first hit Dorries and then Widdecombe. Too shrill for me to handle.

I’m very happy reason prevailed in the end. And with this result in, I think I need to figure out who ‘my MP’ is (less easy with proportional representation) and hear what they’ll vote when the abortion limit comes up for discussion again. It was about a year ago, I think, and was kept at twelve weeks then, though.

Oh! And Evan Harris for PM!

*’pro-life’, my arse

I am very impressed that the pro-lifers have managed to frame the whole abortion debate in terms of viability when their true motivations are transparently inconsistent with this view. You’d think journalists would call them on it. Dorries appears to be the shock trooper, ahead of the main body firing her barely credible scatter-gun arguments to take out the easy targets before the big guns follow up behind to address the grown-ups.

As I noted last October, it looks like the anti-abortionists have chosen the best tactic to convince a fairly credulous public, media, and political class. If viability is the issue, why aren’t the anti-abortionists pressing to make earlier abortions (where viability is not an issue) easier to obtain? Oh yeah, because they think all abortion is murder because little clumps of cells have souls. I forgot.

That probably explains why they are so keen on the viability of foetuses at 22 weeks where pretty much 100% of those that survive end up profoundly and multiply disabled – a level of disability that, interestingly, if you could predict it, you’d probably be allowed to abort that foetus after 24 weeks. Consistency not our strong suite in the UK.

Because, you know, degenerative diseases like Alzheimers, Parkinsons are just sooo dignity-enhancing, aren’t they, John Smeaton, you big eejit?

Whenever I see this kind of scaremongering, I conclude that those involved cannot find any rational arguments to further their cause.

Unfortunately, it turns out that my own MP, the Rt Hon Sir Gerald Kaufman MP, is on the side of the nutters. If I’d have known that, I’d have sent an e-mail myself. Not that it did much good the last time I wrote to him.