Ban On Sale Of Live Foetuses

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32301, 20 May 1970, Page 17

Ban On Sale Of Live Foetuses

(N Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

LONDON, May 19.

The British Government today ordered private clinics that specialise in abortions to stop supplying live foetuses for research purposes.

The order was made after allegations by a leading Roman Catholic member of Parliament, and it gave a warning that Government approval would not be granted to nursing homes continuing the practice. A letter from the Department of Health and Social Security, addressed to private clinics, said: ‘The Secretary of State has been informed that a nursing home approved by him under the Abortions Act has been supplying human foetuses for research purposes. This practice . . . should at once be discontinued." The matter was raised by a Conservative M.P., Mr Norman St John-Stevas, who said that a medical worker had told him about the sale of foetuses. The use of live foetuses in scientific research was defended today by Dr Lawrence Lawn, of the department of investigative medicine at Cambridge University. "Critics are approaching the subject from a purely emo-

tional point of view.” he said. “I can think of no grounds for stopping the use of these foetuses. A foetus is not a human being.” Dr Lawn said that he had no knowledge of the sale of foetuses, but that he had kept human foetuses alive for several hours after they had been taken from wombs. Mr St John-Stevas has said, that, according to his informant, a doctor planned to keep the foetuses in a state of suspended animation in a heartlung machine until they had grown enough for surgery—about 40 weeks after conception.

Dr Lawn said that he knew of no case where life had been extended for more than a few hours. He added that he could not see that the prac tice was ethically wrong, and that if he needed live foetuses he would have no trouble in obtaining them. “A foetus taken from the womb in the early or middle stages of pregnancy is not like a premature baby, but our work with living foetuses should, in time, save the lives of premature babies," he said. He emphasised that the foetuses were necessary to aid the development of an artificial placenta, which he said must be developed to sustain life until premature babies could live unaided.