GESTIÓN EN SALUD PÚBLICA: BioEdge: Dame Mary Warnock, IVF ethics pioneer, dies aged 94

domingo, 24 de marzo de 2019

BioEdge: Dame Mary Warnock, IVF ethics pioneer, dies aged 94

BioEdge: Dame Mary Warnock, IVF ethics pioneer, dies aged 94

Bioedge

Dame Mary Warnock, IVF ethics pioneer, dies aged 94

by Xavier Symons | 23 Mar 2019 |

British moral philosopher Dame Mary Warnock, a public intellectual who laid the foundation for assisted reproduction legislation in the UK, died this week aged 94.

Warnock, who lived and worked in Oxford for much of her life, was a prolific author as well as political commentator. She served as a crossbencher in the House of Lords from 1985 to 2015.

Warnock participated in multiple public and parliamentary inquiries, dealing with topics ranging from special education, environmental pollution, and animal experimentation. But she was best known for chairing the 1982-1984 Committee of Inquiry into Human Fertilisation and Embryology. The committee’s report was the basis of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 – a law that governs human fertility treatment and experimentation using human embryos in the UK.

The Warnock Report was the first public policy document to propose a 14-day limit on human embryo experimentation. This rule has subsequently adopted in jurisdictions around the world.

Pro-life bioethicists have labelled the 14-day rule “arbitrary”. Fr Tadeusz Pacholczyk, of the US National Catholic Bioethics Center, has argued that the rule only pays “lip service to the moral status of the human embryo”. Yet recently some ethicists have argued that the rule should be abandoned for a more liberal policy on embryo experimentation.

In later life Warnock became a staunch supporter of euthanasia. In 2008 she courted controversy for arguing that people with dementia should be given the option of euthanasia if they felt that they were “a burden to their family, or the state”. Indeed, she suggested that there was nothing wrong with feeling in such circumstances that one had a “duty to die”.

Nadine Dorries, a Conservative MP for Mid-Bedfordshire, said Warnock was irresponsible for endorsing such a radical stance on euthanasia: "Because of her previous experiences and well-known standing on contentious moral issues, Baroness Warnock … gives moral authority to what are entirely immoral view points”.

Warnock’s son James told The Times that one of her greatest fears was declin[ing] into dependency”, and that “she insisted on staying at home looking after herself to the end”.

Warnock was often described as a utilitarian, yet some have argued that her philosophical views were far more nuanced. She has been credited with popularising existentialism at Oxford in the 1960s.

Xavier Symons is deputy editor of BioEdge

This is not an appropriate venue for a discussion of my age, but I think that most readers will sympathise with my occasional interest in turning the clock back a few years. What if the hoary adage, "you're only as old as you feel", could have the force of law?

Last year, a flamboyant positivity guru tested this theory in a Dutch court by applying to have his legal age changed from 69 to 49. To no one's surprise, he lost, but the reasoning for the adverse judgement was peculiar (as reported in the media, anyway). The court declared that too much government paperwork depends upon an agreed biological age. At a time when self-identification for gender is widely accepted, this line of reasoning is surprisingly weak.

Which brings me to an intriguing article in the Journal of Medical Ethics (see below) which supports the notion of self-defining age. The author bases it on the need to prevent discrimination on the basis of age, or ageism. I wonder how the courts will respond to this argument.