Category: Malta

In his article Eight cells in the lab  (May 2) Mark Sant, an obstetrician and gynaecologist, a consultant at the Assisted Reproductive Technology Clinic at Mater Dei Hospital, said that “he wants to concentrate on the situation wherein a heterosexual couple come to me asking for help after several years of trying to conceive to no avail”. 

He wrote: “I don’t tell them that nature does not mean for them to complete their family.” That’s a very good compassionate approach from an obstetrician and gynaecologist.

He added: “The European Charter of Human Rights states that everyone has a right to health, and infertility is listed as a health issue, too.” That’s also a very good approach  to begin with.

He added further: “In the very same way that all specialists in medicine have an obligation to remain up to date in their area of expertise, to be able to offer the best possible care to their patients, we who work in infertility are no different.”

Sant seems to be keeping himself up to date selectively, only about one particular medical model to resolve the issue of infertility, the IVF and embryo freezing method. He  seems to be  totally  unaware of the natural method to infertility, another non-medical model. One may  ask a nutritionist and dietician on this, anywhere in  the world, including Malta, and he or she starts to talk at length on the great benefits of this model.

It is true, as Sant says, that the rate of infertility is increasing in many parts of the world, including Malta, and that many couples in particular, are desperate to conceive. Sant should have defined the main problem he was writing about – what are the causes of infertility – before  making gratuitous statements.

These causes are not only physiological to be treated by gynaecologists and obstetricians like Sant.

In  the description of “the best natural infertility treatment” by leading nutritionists and dieticians it includes poor nutrition, emotional stress, sexually transmitted diseases, thyroid disorders, medical conditions, eating disorders, excessive obesity, and hormonal problems.

Caffeine also can cause hormonal imbalances, dehydration and lead to mineral deficiencies. High consumption has been shown to interfere with fertility. Lowering caffeine or giving it up entirely is a smart idea when one is trying to get pregnant.

Drugs, like marijuana, can negatively affect fertility by making ovulation more difficult each month.

To cure infertility nutritionists and dieticians recommend not IVF and embryo freezing but eating a healing diet.

Another natural infertility treatment is to consume more fertility-promoting supplements.

The good news, nutritionists say, is that most couples will eventually conceive, without costly and often invasive infertility treatments. The success rate here is about 80 per cent. The success rate of IVF and embryo freezing is about 25 per cent.

If Sant knows about the natural method to fertility, and as a gynaecologist he must know about it,  it is obvious he is deliberately discarding it,  as frozen embryos are eventually discarded  in his medical model to infertility. 

At a certain point  in his article, Sant said that “he would have loved to be acclaimed as the Maltese pioneer to have put forward certain beliefs on this subject”, and  then quoted Fr Peter Serracino Inglott, a philosopher, not a scientist, who, according to Sant, “did not equate the early embryo to a human being and had no qualms with embryo freezing”.

He added further: “And I’m not even mentioning science.” That was a stark admission that he is leaving science, altogether, out of the fertility/infertility problem.

Notwithstanding, he felt presumptuously comfortable in making a gratuitous scientific declaration that “eight cells in the laboratory is not a human being. It has the potential to become one using very extraordinary measures. The potential ‘to be’ is not equivalent to ‘being’.”

The deputy prime minister said it before.   

Sant seems to possess the credentials of a champion of the throw-away culture at its best. 

In 1960, Bernard Nathanson, an obstetrician and gynaecologist like Sant, was for a time the director of the Centre for Reproductive and Sexual Health (CRASH), seemingly also like Sant at Mater Dei Hospital. CRASH was then the largest freestanding abortion facility in the world.

In 1974 Nathanson wrote: “I am deeply troubled by my own increasing certainty that I had in fact presided over 60,000 deaths.”

Nathanson  developed in 1996 what he called the “vector theory of life”, which states that from the moment of conception there exists “a self-directed force of life that, if not interrupted, will lead to the birth of a human baby”.

In 1981, a United States Senate judiciary subcommittee invited experts to testify on the question of when life begins. Jerome Lejeune, professor of genetics at the University of Descartes in Paris and the discoverer of the chromosome pattern of Down Syndrome, told the judiciary subcommittee that “after fertilisation has taken place a new human being has come into being”. 

He stated that this “is no longer a matter of taste or opinion”  and “not a metaphysical contention: it is plain experimental evidence… Each individual  has a very neat beginning at conception.”

Sant seems not to have heard about Nathanson and Lejeune. 

He also lambasted all those who do not agree with him: “All the vociferous anti-IVF-reform campaigners have one thing in common. They have staunch extreme Catholic beliefs.” He forgot he had previously quoted a  Catholic philosopher-priest to prove his point.

Very respectable local institutions like the Malta Paediatric Association, the Faculty of Social Well-Being of the University of Malta, and 100 academics practically from all the university faculties,  expressed their views on this subject publicly and categorically, very contrary to his own.    

There is also adoption and fostering for childless couples. The government should subsidise these services much more, especially adoption.  

This newspaper should be congratulated for advising that “women who eat fast food and little or no fruit take longer to become pregnant” (May 5) while also  showing the beauty and greatness  of adoption services in its May issue of Pink magazine.

Sant should really lead. He should work also for the strengthening of these services to help infertile couples have children. That’s his pledge to them.

Tony Mifsud is coordinator, Malta Unborn Child Movement.

An embryo is a new, unique individual produced when an egg from a woman is fertilised by a sperm from a man. An embryo is made up of cells, a new born baby from a larger number of cells and an adult is made of an even larger number of cells. Indeed, one needs to watch out for terms such as ‘fertilized eggs’, ‘fertilized cells’, or ‘cells from fertilized eggs’  being used instead of the term ‘embryo’, as this may desensitise us to the fact that the embryo is a new human life.

The proposed Bill regarding embryos discriminates against these individuals both when they are still embryos but also way after they are born.

It also forces already vulnerable IVF couples to choose between increasing their chances of becoming parents but then donating their extra embryos for adoption by unknown individuals, or doing IVF with a decreased chance of success.

Research conducted abroad shows that over 80 per cent of IVF couples would rather let their embryos die or be donated to research, than having to live with the knowledge of having their biological children being brought up by people who they have no say in choosing. Can we blame them?

Moreover, both the children of the couple and those adopted will essentially know they have full siblings who they can never know about or get to know.

People born as a result of embryo adoption will have the right to access the anonymised medical records of their biological parents.

But, anonymous records cannot be updated. This means that biological children of a 20-year-old donor who was in good health at the time of donation but still died young from an inherited medical condition will have no clue as to what their risks are.

Under normal circumstances, of course, the children of such a person would be tested and have their health managed. But no such luck for these children.

Another reality for extra embryos is that with the introduction of sperm and egg donation, the chances of the embryos being adopted is small in the first place.

Most same-sex couples, that have been mentioned as those interested in adopting, would rather have the biological child of one of them, given the choice. Especially since the frozen embryos that will be up for adoption will be those not chosen for the couple producing them, i.e. not the ‘best’.

This means most embryos will be left to disintegrate, die or otherwise be lost.

The fact is that thawing embryos already kills one out of three and apart from this, alarms and apparati can fail, as we have seen lately in the case where several couples lost their embryos.

Sperm and egg donation create another set of problems which can affect both the couples receiving the donation and their future children. The Bill proposes that there would be an Embryo Authority which will licence clinics offering the service.

However, it leaves the vetting of who can donate up to the licensed clinics.

The clinic will have to send all records to the authority but donations will be anonymous. So, how will the authority be able to prevent a person donating more than once and prevent half siblings having children between themselves in future?

It is not like in our tiny Malta the chances of meeting is small.

The possibility of inheritance of serious genetic conditions would be considerable in these cases. Also, how will the clinics vet for genetic conditions in the first place?

These are serious problems which the Bill does not even begin to address.

Presently, pregnant mothers are tested for common genetic conditions. If a mother is found to be a carrier of a condition the father is tested. In the case of anonymous sperm donation this will be impossible. This likely possibility is also not addressed in the new Bill.

Considering all the issues and all the individuals that will have their lives affected by this Bill, more time and care should be given in order to best protect all parties involved.

Rushing through the process, as presently done, is both reckless and insane.

Svetlana Schembri Wismayer is a Junior College senior lecturer.

As women’s rights activists call for the legalisation of abortion, particularly in cases of rape, Lara Sierra, herself a rape victim, speaks to a pro-life campaigner, born of rape, about her international campaign to remove the parental rights of rapists. It is out of gratitude that her life was somehow protected that she now wants to protect others.

Rebecca Kiessling arrives in a sparkly jumper, with her big blonde hair and an American drawl. Best of all is her outlandish, multi-coloured, phone-shaped handbag, which actually works as a phone. But underneath her feminine flamboyance is a soft-spoken woman, with the ability to move mountains with her words.

“I am a pro-life activist and a lawyer,” she explains. “I have been working on a law for 10 years, which [Barack] Obama signed in 2016. It is called the Rape Survivor Child Custody Act – to terminate the parental rights of rapists without requiring a rape conviction.” 

Yes, that is correct. Rapists have parental rights to any offspring that are a consequence of their crime. Yet, without a rape conviction, how are they proven guilty? 

“I deal with this all over the world,” Rebecca, a guest of Life Network, answers. “In other circumstances, you do not need to have a conviction to remove the rights of a parent. For child molestation, or child abuse, you need a heightened standard of evidence. In the US, we call it clear and convincing evidence. 

“We looked at the law in Malta in 2016 with a team of lawyers and there is a judicial standard that allows for the termination of parental rights, so it would be the same for mothers with children born of rape. It’s the same way I’ve dealt with this in the US and other countries I’ve worked with,” Rebecca explains.

“This law was designed to be part of a package for gender violence… Some legislators question how often these cases actually occur? But that is such an ignorant view. They don’t understand how prevalent rape is. It is wildly under-reported.” 

Statistics worldwide make for depressing reading. In the US, 994 perpetrators out of 1,000 reported cases of rape will walk free, mostly because victims will drop their charges for one reason or another. In the UK, only 15 per cent of cases of sexual abuse are reported to the police. In Malta, around 160 cases of rape were reported in the last decade, but that is not at all an indication of the amount that actually happen. 

Unreported rape statistics exist across the whole of Europe: it is estimated that about 67 per cent go unreported, yet this average is woefully inaccurate for each country. It includes, for example, the UK, which had a 173 per cent rise in reported sexual violence between 2008 and 2015.

Not in a hurry to go back to the UK after reading that? Don’t be; high reporting statistics are not necessarily bad news and could be an indication that victims trust their politicians and police enough to know they will be safe and protected when reporting an act of violence against them. 

Hopefully, what happened at the end of 2017 will make a dramatic difference to this too. The Harvey Weinstein revelations set off a cascade of revelatory stories of sexual abuse across the Western world, including the ensuing #metoo campaign and yet more stories involving high-profile figures against males, females and children no less. 

Rebecca sighs. “The problem with #metoo is that women whose perpetrators are still at large were unable to speak out. They had to use a pseudonym, or not speak out at all.”

It’s a valid point, and more evidence that women are often too fearful to report a rape. I was one of the luckier ones. I was drugged and raped by someone who lived on the other side of the world; who had very few personal details about me. Yet I did not go to the police either. Why not? Because, as many other victims feel, I felt shame, guilt and disgust at myself. 

There was clear evidence that I had been attacked; I awoke with blood on my clothes, bruises on my thighs and bite marks on my torso. Yet the mental state that perpetuated over the next few years was one of such self-loathing that I came to believe the attack was my fault. This is a symptom of trauma. And in cases of rape, where other symptoms often also include memory loss and low levels of self-esteem, no wonder so few victims go to the police. 

Since making my story known, I have had many people coming to me, privately and secretly, confessing crimes committed against them too, and none of them had reported their attacks either. This is proof, then, that the problem exists in Malta, even if we don’t have the statistics on it. And, in a bitter twist of fate, this reluctance to report an attack is a massive thumbs-up for the attackers. It keeps them walking free and confidently continuing their wicked ways.

Rebecca too has her own experience of rape. “I was conceived in rape and put up for adoption,” she explains. “My birth mother was abducted at knife point by a serial rapist. She never knew who he was. I found out a year-and-a-half ago, due to new DNA technology, and we both hoped that he would either be in prison, or dead. But no, he has never been convicted. 

“I was frequently sexually assaulted, aged 10, by an adult, and I was also raped by a boyfriend when I was 19. He broke my jaw,” she pauses. “I’ve never spoken about this in Malta.” 

Rebecca’s life story is heart-breaking, yes, but inspirational too. “I met my birth mother when I was 19, after deciding to find out who she was. I received non-identifying information, which had all sorts of information about her. But all it said about my father is that he was Caucasian and of large build. I felt devalued. I felt like I now had to justify my own existence. 

I called my case worker and asked her if my birth mother had been raped and she said: ‘I didn’t want to tell you.’ 

“I felt like my life had become a feather, just floating, and I wanted to feel safe and grounded that she would never have aborted me. But no, when we met, she told me she had sought out two illegal abortions. I felt like I was not supposed to be there; I just happened to be saved. It’s out of gratitude for my life being protected that I want to protect others. I wasn’t lucky, but I was protected. Legality matters.”

Rebecca always wanted to be a lawyer. “Absolutely! My adopted dad took me to see a film called The Verdict, and straight away, I wanted to be that hero and defend victims. People used to say: ‘Oh you want to be a lawyer… Does that mean you’re a feminist?’ I thought, yes, I believe in women; I want to defend women’s rights. But then I started to hear that feminists are pro-abortion, and I thought, what does being a feminist have to do with killing babies? It didn’t make sense. One of the great things about women is how loving and nurturing they are. This is what makes us special.”

It is undeniable that abortion is not loving, nor nurturing, but it is important to state the other side of the argument too. The Women’s Rights Foundation, for example, calls abortion a human right, which should be given at least to save a woman’s life, to preserve her physical and mental health, in cases of rape and incest and in the eventuality of fatal foetus impairment.

It has also called for the decriminalisation of abortion so that Maltese women who access abortion in other countries, or through telemedicine, do not face criminal proceedings and risk three years imprisonment especially when accessing local health services for possible post-abortion complications.

It is an interesting point; and a valid one when considering the amount of women taking a quick ‘holiday’ to the UK or Sicily in times of desperation. That figure is unknown, but according to Dr Miriam Sciberras, pro-life activist for Life Network, there were about 90 reported cases of illegal abortions in Malta in 2016. 

She, along with the rest of Life Network, are launching a helpline, and meeting groups for women who are in pregnancy crisis. “We believe that anything that threatens human life is an abuse,” she says. Yet their line will also support women who are struggling post-abortion. 

Life Line is a 24-hour, fully confidential, pregnancy support network for females in crisis, regarding pregnancy, negative pregnancy results and post-abortion healing, including for family and friends. 

The support is available via an online chat and telephone service. It aims to provide a warm, non-judgemental and friendly interface to help empower women to make life-affirming choices.

“A big problem is that people are against abortion except in cases of rape,” Rebecca says. “What’s more, a lot of rape victims are seen as bad feminists and bad rape victims when they decide to keep their child. The children are called ‘Satan’s spawn’ and ‘demon child’… Yet many women come to me asking for forgiveness. ‘Would my baby forgive me for aborting it?’ I tell them that in heaven, there are no more tears.”

People tend to use biblical references when seeking moral direction, and yet, Rebecca says, it was her atheist adopted grandmother who is responsible for her pro-life beliefs. 

“Being pro-life does not require a biblical base. I am a child of God and I am also a child of a rape victim. I know my worth and it is not that I am a lawyer, and I don’t have to show you my finances. 

“I have a wonderful husband and I have five children. When my daughter was six, she wrote a book, which she showed me. Inside, she had written: ‘Conceived in rape is not bad. Because that’s my mum’.”

You can’t argue with that. And really, it is quite simple. Rape is bad; life is good. But unfortunately, life is also complicated, challenging, and at times, extraordinarily difficult. Women often get the raw end of the deal. But, really, that just makes them stronger, and more understanding of others.

Ref: https://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20180511/life-features/i-am-a-child-of-god-and-i-am-also-a-child-of-a-rape-victim.678479?utm_source=tom&utm_campaign=top5&utm_medium=widget

The Pro Life movement has hit out at the way the discussion regarding proposed amendments to the Embryo Protection Act is being handled.

The Movement, in a letter sent to the President, the Prime Minister, the Opposition Leader, and the Speaker of the House, noted that while “Health Minister Chris Fearne reportedly told the House Business Committee that there would be wide public consultation before the third reading of the bill, it seems government is planning a vote for 4 July.”

They took note of the long Parliamentary plenary sessions which took place to close the second reading of the bill, so that the Consideration of Bills Committee will then meet in plenary form to consider the bill. They note, however, that this procedure will not allow for direct interventions by interested parties and experts, who would be limited to advising an MP.

They said that to their understanding, this is not the ideal way by which a free widespread consultation should take place, arguing that it limits participation to MPs.

They argue that this method will force interested parties to identify with one side or another of the political divide, reducing their credibility and exposing them to criticism that they had a partisan agenda.

The Movement argued that experts and interested parties should have the possibility of putting their arguments forward without political affiliation. “Our aim remains to help infertile couples, with full respect to life and the fundamental rights of children who are born through this technology, while paying attention to moral and ethical considerations.”

As such, they have asked Parliament to consider adopting a discussion method that allows widespread participation from MPs, experts and interested parties in the spirit of the President’s request for consultation.

They argue that the President had asked for a discussion with all parties, not a debate limited to the confines of Parliament, in order for all voices to be heard.

The signatories of the letter include representatives from the Life Network Foundation, the Malta Unborn Child Foundation, the Gift-Of-Life Foundation, the Association of Pediatricians, the National Council of Women, the Cana Movement, and others.

The full letter can be read here.

Ref: http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2018-05-09/local-news/Pro-Life-Movement-wants-more-than-a-political-debate-on-Embryo-Protection-Act-proposals-6736189561

I have been following the debate on the amendments to the IVF law with great interest and am proud of the many men and women who have contributed to the debate – their devotion to the unborn and their sympathy for infertile couples too. It is not an easy subject to discuss as there are many emotions involved. However, the most important emotion is that of wanting to protect the innocent and voiceless unborn child.

I have worked for many years in this field, mainly because I have a love for children and feel they need protection and love from the earliest stages in the womb.  We just cannot treat babies as commodities to suit the adults. It is just not fair.

As an example of IVF, I quote a couple I know who went to England for IVF treatment. They now have a beautiful 18-month-old child and four frozen embryos in England. The wife does not want more children so what is going to happen to those four frozen embryos – tell me?

Will they get “adopted” by a British couple? Get thrown away or be left to die? No, that is not ethical. Malta must not go down that route. Surely as a nation we care a lot about our children as demonstrated in the Manifestation for Life on April 22 in Valletta. Along with many others, I was there, aged 80, carrying the white balloons that symbolised the unborn embryos.  

The crowd was enthusiastic about our speakers and Joanna Rose told us to not go down that route of frozen embryos and gamete donation but to be the people we are now – loving and protecting children from the embryonic stage. 

The organiser of the event and chairman of Life Network Malta, Miriam Sciberras, was passionate in what she said about the present “amendments” to the Embryo Protection Act and spoke of the complications that will arise were they to be implemented.

She is tireless in her defence of the unborn and I have never seen such devotion and commitment as hers to this cause. 

Malta deserves better and I ask the public to come out and protest against this ghastly and inhuman situation we now find ourselves in. The President does not agree with the rushed approach to this issue.

The Commissioner for Children should be ashamed of herself for agreeing to a Bill that harms children at the embryonic stage. She, if anyone, should be standing up for the unborn. Maybe, she feels that she has to submit to her lord and master who gave her the job. Poor Malta! What are we coming to? 

It was once a wonderful country. We are defacing its character in more ways than one. Come on Malta. Sweden does not allow surrogacy and they are a very liberal and ‘progressive’ nation so there must be something really worrisome about such a development.

Why do we not improve the lives of women in crisis pregnancy with the amount of surplus money that this government boasts about? That will increase the nation’s population in a healthy way.

‘Creating babies’ will lead to untold psychological messes. I explained this to Health Minister Chris Fearne on Facebook when I asked him how he would feel if he were conceived in such a manner – egg from A, sperm from B, womb from C to be delivered to couple D.

It’s all wrong and a stop must be put to this insane idea. I hope that the debate will be calm and reasonable and not madly rammed through come what may. 

Malta does not deserve this. We are a peaceful loving people who are proud of our children and want the best for them, even if this demands making many sacrifices at times.

So, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, if you really love Malta, listen to the voice of the Maltese who cry out for compassion for the unborn.

Mary Hilda Camilleri is a retired music teacher who worked in pro-life organisations in London and now with Life Network Foundation.

Controversies arise when the term ‘person’ is used to denote a definite moment in the life cycle of a human being.

It is indeed a philosophical question with possible legal and ethical connotations. It seeks to decide who is and who is not a person and thus aims to establish that someone is a human being but at the same time not a person, even though one is part of the community.

Biologically, human beings are classified as members of the homo sapiens species. On the other hand, the question of what is life or non-life has a purely scientific answer, as life is described as a condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms.

An embryo is a genetically unique, biologically human and has intrinsic biological properties whose blueprint dictates deve­lopment and growth. It is definitely alive, and the term pre-embryo is an invented, unscientific term. The precursors of life are amino acids which, after all, are the building blocks of DNA. 

Trying to define the scientific term ‘human being’ from a philosophical perspective drives one into a bottomless pit. The terms ‘human being’ and ‘person’ are not the same, as they denote different things in two different specialties.

In the parliamentary debates on the protection of the human embryo, the government is mixing the facts of science with myths, and has gone so far as to quote the late Prof. Peter Serracino Inglott with a political twist.

Gilbert Scott, a prominent development biologist, states: “The entity created by fertilisation is indeed a human embryo, and it has the potential to be a human adult. Whether these facts are enough to accord it personhood is a question by opinion, philosophy and theology, rather than by science.”

To put it bluntly, various philosophical thinkers have tried to give an answer to the question: When does the unborn child become a person: at conception, at birth, somewhere in between or much later in life?

There a number of schools of philosophical thought on personhood, among them John Noonan, Mary Anne Warren, The Social Criterion, and Peter Singer. Prof. Serracino Inglott in 2015 had hypnotised his own opinion. It is truly unbecoming of government to make political capital by mixing science with a personal philosophical statement.

The most recent is The Gradient Theory. It suggests that personhood fits within a spectrum of a variety of degrees. An embryo has less personhood than a foetus, a newborn would have more personhood than both, an infant more than an unborn foetus, a child more still, and so on. Therefore, even if this theory does not deny the personhood of any being, it permits discrimination based upon the level of perceived personhood. Does this mean that when a person sleeps, that individual is less of a person?

The concept of a person is one of the most difficult terms to define and denotes rights and obligations. It is an argument that has been ongoing for decades. Charles Taylor, and others who have the same line of thinking, put forward this definition: “A person is a being who has a sense of self, has a notion of the future and past, can hold values, make choices; in short, can adopt life-plans. At least, a person must be the kind of being who is capable of all this, however damaged these capacities may be in practice.”

This statement defines personhood as a function of feelings, awareness, experiences and behaviour. In this approach we become and may cease to be a person, while we remain a human being all the time. It follows that since the unborn has none of these capacities, they are not a person, and killing the unborn is not seriously wrong. This infers that an embryo and foetus do not have a right to life.

Science factually affirms the contrary. Similarly, it does not make sense to say that a person comes to existence when the functionality of a human is manifested. Good sense distinguishes between what one is and what one does, between actual and function, thus between being a person and functioning as a person. In my opinion, defining personhood in terms of function is inaccurate and wrong.

A human being is a person because one is actually a person, and not because one functions as a person. Obviously, this capacity to function develops gradually in a human’s life and continues throughout one’s lifetime, as all persons have the potential to grow emotionally and intellectually. Likewise, an embryo is a human and a person, who has a natural inherent capacity, and will gradually develop this functionality.

All human beings are actual persons and it is their functioning that is potential. The embryo is not a potential person but a person with much potential. Our embryonic beginning, as members of the human species, starts off a process of development of a person and not a process of development into a person. The difference between the individual in its adult stage and in its zygotic stage is not one of personhood but of development.

Life should be protected because it is the right thing to do. Humanity dictates it. 

Godfrey Farrugia is an MP for Partit Demokratika.

Ref: https://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20180506/opinion/When-can-we-say-that-a-human-being-is-a-person-Godfrey-Farrugia.678333

Mark Sant is an old friend and a top specialist in his field. I have no doubt that the feelings he has for couples suffering the pain of infertility and his wishes to help them are genuine (May 2).

Sant sees people in this stage and time of life and, as a medical doctor, wishes to care for them in this stage. I on the other hand am a cell biologist and study human cells on a day-to-day basis so I understand cells, even when the cells are forming the very beginning of a human life.

This was attested to by 23 scientists including professors in molecular biology, genetics and cell biology and published in this newspaper. Standard embryology texts like Langman’s embryology, which both I myself as well as Sant studied from, also state this clearly.

None of these scientists (including myself) could be considered the ultra- Catholic right. I for one, barely made any noise, for example, about the campaign for divorce, or the choice for gay marriage. I am glad LGBTIQ people are able to declare their love for each other in the same way I can for my better half.

I am sure many of the people hailing from Sant’s own political or medical background similarly disagree with him, independent of their political or religious beliefs.

In fact, the Malta Paediatric Association (child specialist doctors) came out with a statement defending life from conception. They too, maybe, seeing the child in their medical practice, are much more understanding of the development of life in its earlier stages.

However, the record must be set straight. No one can stop our country from eventually deciding to freeze embryos, if that is what our politicians believe, even though I wish to live in a country which respects life in all its beauty and fragility, something already being lost in the way elderly people are sometimes treated by our health services.

What I do not however accept, is misquoting the truth or being economical with it to manipulate public opinion.

For example, websites and papers like the one which I think Sant used to find the opinions of other faiths regarding the embryo, do not only indicate the opinions he quoted, i.e. that of Muslims and Jews. It also indicates that Hindus, like Catholics, believe that personhood starts with conception.

 Protestant Christians generally do not have a consensus opinion with some using the 14-day cut-off, while others agree with protecting the embryo from conception. Even the opinion of Muslims varies.

Together with Buddhists, many of them, believe in fact that personhood can start from implantation (i.e. less than 10 days, not 40 or 120 after conception). Despite these various opinions (correctly called opinions, as Sant states), some scholars of various religions agree with research into embryos, making their stances quite flexible. 

All of this can occur because of the philosophical concept of personhood. Some philosophers base their thinking on blatantly incorrect science and scientific interpretation, including our own late Fr Peter Serracino Inglott. These relate personhood to individuality, with the argument that since up to 14 days post-fertilisation, twins can still develop, therefore the embryo is possibly not a single individual and thus not a person.

The suggested idea is that two individuals could be hidden within the single embryo.

This scientific view shows a serious lack of knowledge of stem cell function. Our earliest stage of development – the human being who was me (or you, or Sant), is capable of self-healing, a feature which is found in our case only in our earliest stages.

On the other hand, other animals, retain this capability as adults. If you split a starfish in half, each part can heal, to produce two starfish, the original individual and a new one. To compare with humans, it is as if, once a human’s arm is cut off, the original human would heal by regrowing its arm, and the arm, would regrow the rest of the body, making a new second human being.

It is never the case that two individuals were there hidden inside those of us who become twins. All embryos are one life, but if for some reason they are “broken” in two, they can heal to form two different embryos, even if genetically identical.

This is the biological basis for disproving the false philosophical premise propagated by many including our own PSI. Despite his skill in philosophy, ideas based on false science are just that – false.

However, I do not feel we need to descend into these details of philosophical thought, or necessarily explain such complex science.

When our loved ones die, they (despite the fact that they have no potential to be human beings at all) are treated by all cultures, including our own, with respect. Apart from legal medical services, no one freezes corpses. It is more the kind of story from a CSI episode.

If we afford the dead bodies of our loved ones respect, when they have no life within, nor will they ever, why does our beautiful country wish to afford much less respect to the embryos which will become our future children?

After all, as Nobel Prize winner Robert Edwards, the Cambridge University physiologist who co-developed the (IVF) method, said (regarding Louise Brown, the first baby to be born using IVF): “Last time I saw the baby it was just eight cells. It was beautiful then and still beautiful now.”

Pierre Schembri-Wismayer is an associate professor, Department of Anatomy, University Faculty of Medicine and Surgery.

Ref: https://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20180507/opinion/Human-in-a-test-tube-Pierre-Schembri-Wismayer.678428

This is the attitude of our Prime Minister, who is being pig-headed and seems to have decided a long time ago to introduce certain changes to the IVF law, even though this involved the sacrifice of innocent human lives in the process. We have seen that we can have IVF with fresh and frozen oocytes (eggs), which has given us an ethical edge and success too. Our pregnancy rate per embryo transfer is 30 per cent, similar to the European average, and our take-home baby rate is 21 per cent, slightly below the 25 per cent European average, with about 250 babies born through IVF in six years. Not bad considering that our IVF centre and expertise is 6 years old, that we carry out IVF ethically and preserve human dignity, that we do not do Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis and discard disabled embryos like those with Down’s syndrome and that we protect human life completely.

However the Prime Minister is determined to introduce IVF with embryo freezing in order to have a batch of frozen embryos available for surrogacy, and according to his ill-given advice, to maybe raise the IVF take home baby rate by about two per cent by transferring embryos to a women’s womb at five days of development rather than at three days of development, at the so called blastocyst stage rather than the morula stage. To do this after five days, weaker or non-viable embryos would have likely died, and the new legal amendments will allow for the fertilisation of five oocytes rather than the previous two. The result is that one could possibly end up with more than two embryos at the five-day transfer stage, which means that the best two have to be chosen for transfer to the womb (a eugenic practice) and the others frozen (to be later donated to people who will take them). The resulting cost comes as a gross travesty of human dignity.

To be able to bring in surrogacy and carry out the above-mentioned blastocyst stage transfer, the government is prepared to do away with the life of several (10 to 30 per cent) human beings at an early stage of development both because they die in the thawing or freezing process and because they will inevitably accumulate as they do in other countries, which then presents a problem with what to do with them other than donate them to surrogate mothers as baby commodities. This is unacceptable ethically and unlike the way the government thinks, the end does not justify the means, meaning it is not acceptable to do something wrong to achieve something right (if one can ever call surrogacy right). Not that this principle bothers it or any of the Labour MPs it seems.

In its rush to appear progressive and modern and to have its way, the government and its cronies are saying and doing a lot of silly things such as stating that the early stage embryo is not a baby or a child because it has only eight cells while big daddy has about a trillion cells. What difference may I ask is there whether I sweep away the life of a human being at the eight-cell stage and that at the trillion cell stage or any cell stage in between? The reality is that science shows us clearly that at the stage of fertilisation there is an actively developing human being with its own DNA and active potency to develop till birth and adulthood. These are called the Carnegie stages of embryological development which start at the single cell zygote stage after fertilisation is ended. Anything else is not scientific! Cells at the eight-cell stage are said to be totipotent because they develop into an adult human being if given half the chance, that is, unlike skin or liver cells said to be mature cells or pluripotent stem cells which can never do so. This can only happen after fertilisation when the establishment of the cell with the new singular embryonic DNA has taken place and new original epigenetic patterns start to be laid down. Not only is it a human being, a new unique member of our species, but it is also a human person because it is an individuated, developing human being, after Boethius’ definition of personhood that being an individuated human being of a rational nature. It is the rational nature or essence of the human being that defines him as such rather than the exhibited particulars such as moving, walking or exhibiting self-consciousness as we all exhibit these traits at certain times of our life and not at others.

The fact is Joseph Muscat must be seen to have his way, he has to have freezing and surrogacy brought in to accommodate lobbies, even though strictly speaking there is no need for embryo freezing to be allowed in order to bring about surrogacy, as this can still happen with frozen eggs! All this is done in the name of progress, without any respect for nascent human life. Some progress! I would say a retrograde travesty of human dignity.

I personally would find difficulty reconciling this position with natural law, which commands us to respect and protect other human lives as members of our own species, especially if they are innocent and powerless and endowed with an absolute right to life. I find it difficult to reconcile it with virtue ethics and particularly justice, justice asking us to give everyone his equal share. I find it difficult to reconcile it with the ethics of duty. I find it difficult to reconcile this position with Maltese law which is clear about purposeful killing of innocent life. I find it impossible to reconcile this position with Christian doctrine because of the Divine order not to kill (Do not kill – other human beings), especially St Paul’s clear position in Romans where he states clearly that it is not morally acceptable to do something bad to ever achieve something good. Neither does it tally with any commandment to love one another. Therefore, I leave it to the dictates of these individuals to justify their consciences and think about what to say when they ultimately need to give an account of their actions. I hope they can convince God that the eight-cell embryo is not a human being, but respectfully to them and to God, they sure do not convince me!

michael.asciak@parlament.mt

Dr Asciak is a Senior Lecturer II in Applied Science at MCAST.

Download the full document by clicking the link below:

Matters of Concern – Reflections by Maltese Academics

The Bill amending the Embryo Protection Act 2012 embodies a philosophy of law that is completely distinct from the philosophy of the original 2012 law. Misleadingly clothed as ‘amendments’ to the 2012 law, the Bill embodies a totally new philosophy.    

An initial observation is necessary. Sometimes, one may feel in conscience impelled to speak out when an important issue is eminently ethical. When on a given ethical issue a stand is taken, it cannot in fairness be called “meddling in politics”.

I now take up three specific issues.

Firstly, if the proposed Bill is passed, Maltese law would recognise an unrestricted right to adults who desire it to have a child within our national health system. Now if the embryo’s mother will not be carrying the child herself, then another woman must stand in for her. Thus surrogate motherhood “has” to be introduced.

At a forum organised by the Christian Life Communities (CLC) at the University Chaplaincy, moral theologian Nadia Delicata emotionally but most correctly blasted surrogacy as “double objectification”: both the embryo and the surrogate mother are there reduced to objects (Times of Malta, April 24).

Sweden’s Social-Democratic government, “the first feminist government in the world”, in 2016 totally banned surrogacy in Sweden.  So ‘liberal’ Sweden has banned surrogacy as offending the dignity of woman. 

At a conference on women’s rights in 2017, feminists and Catholics joined forces to condemn surrogacy as totally “incompatible with the human rights and the dignity of women”.

Secondly, the present Bill, were it to become law, would guarantee the total anonymity of all adults involved in an IVF process through gamete-donation: a child born out of the said process can never discover who her/his biological parents are. This gives 100 per cent protection to the adults involved, while giving zero importance to the legitimate interests of the child.

We can easily end up with half-brothers and half-sisters marrying, which in the small genetic pool of our Maltese community, could have significant long-term genetic consequences.

Thirdly, since life begins at conception, freezing an embryo is tantamount to freezing a human being. When embryos are later thawed, statistically anything up to 25 per cent of them die a natural death.  In other words, setting up an embryo-freezing facility implies that one in four of those human beings with immense potential would be condemned to die before they have even opened their eyes. 

Read in depth, the new Bill would bring about a total change in perspective as regards IVF.  The 2012 Maltese law was carefully modelled on its Italian counterpart law, the 2004 law regarding Fecondazione Assistita.

The Italian law and hence our 2012 law placed the embryo/foetus/baby at the centre of legislative attention, thereby also sending a subliminal message to the public that, even prescinding from religion, it is eminently human and ethically absolutely correct to put the vulnerable little person at the very centre of IVF legislation. 

This did not mean that the desires of adults were/are not important, and insofar as such concerns were, at least in secular (non-religious) ethics, acceptable, they were in fact met by the 2012 Act.  That law however stopped short of giving the adults all they wanted, particularly if this could only come about at the expense of the little vulnerable human being.

What we could call the fundamental philosophy of the 2012 Malta law concerning IVF was that the interests of the embryo/foetus/child were paramount.

In sharp contrast to the 2012 Malta law, the fundamental philosophy of the present Bill is consciously to favour, not the embryo/foetus/child, but the adults involved.  The Prime Minister was keen that this legislation would be rushed through Parliament. This had happened at least once before – after the 2013 election, when, as promised in the electoral manifesto, same-sex marriage was approved, but with an added element not to be found in the manifesto – the possibility of adoption by same-sex couples.  

It will escape nobody that this is exactly the same philosophy of law that animates the present ‘amendments’: please the adults, don’t ask what might or might not be in the best interests of the children.

It is sad that some, who are intellectually gifted, have attempted to present this as an issue mostly concerning the interests of adult minorities. In the light of the multi-faceted ethical concerns presented above (and expressed better elsewhere by others), these persons have completely missed the point.

The Prime Minister (April 23) acknowledged that some ‘genuine’ criticism against the amendments was offered.  Besides former Labour Cabinet members George Vella and Deborah Schembri, serious concerns about the ‘amendments’ were also expressed by the Maltese bishops, the Malta Paediatric Society and doctors and scientists, raising various scientific points, including possible incest and the gradual degeneration of the genetic pool, lawyers viewing the matter from a human rights perspective, philosophers writing about the violation of the dignity of the human embryo… indeed citizens from all walks of life have criticised the ‘amendments’.

All finally finding powerful expression in the presence of the many thousands of people who thronged Valletta on April 22 to protest against the ‘amendments’.

Dr Muscat argues that the 2017 electoral manifesto and his success at the polls give him a strong mandate to ‘improve’ the 2012 IVF law. Improve yes, radically change no! The ‘amendments’, far from being an “improvement” on the 2012 Embryo Protection Act, would de facto lead to the “complete travesty” that George Vella spoke of.

The 2012 law would be shamelessly deformed, its noble original purposes totally debased.