TRANSCRIPT‘Barbara, Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls, I am delighted to be here today.
I had an invitation – about a year ago -- out of the blue to read another manuscript. I have lots of invitations to read manuscripts of various kinds; they’re usually rather dry academic volumes. This was not a dry academic volume. It might have been a dry novel but a novel it was. It did not pretend to be anything else, but based on interesting and controversial facts. ‘I happened to be about to leave the country on a rather long flight and was looking for a good read and in a moment of weakness I said, “I shall be pleased to read it and make some comments on it.” And how glad I am that I did because it was a thoroughly good read and the journey seemed quite a short journey. ‘Imagine a wealthy person or couple desperate to have a child of a certain kind, able to pay the best scientist in the world to achieve their dream of a child exactly like someone else that they know. Imagine a scientist keen to make his name, keen to be world famous, keen to be the first to clone a human being -- a powerful mixture of desires and motives -- and when they come together anything is possible. ‘Now you might think that I am telling you a story that you should read when you buy the novel and I am, but I am also talking about what has already happened. This is incredibly good timing and Barbara has shown considerable foresight in writing the novel she has written because perhaps the scientist with the greatest ego – a man I know, Professor Antinori, whose clinic is under the walls of the Vatican -- claimed only the day before yesterday that a wealthy person of Middle Eastern Origin, who wanted a child exactly like someone they knew, was willing to pay him, a scientist with an unbounded desire to be a very famous man, to clone a human being. He claims that he has succeeded in that there is a lady somewhere in the world currently 8 weeks pregnant carrying a cloned embryo. ‘These are incredible days in medical science. In the last 12 months we have completely mapped the human genome. We don’t know what that information really holds for us but we believe that we have the key to vast amounts of knowledge about how human beings function. That knowledge can be used for good or for evil – like most scientific discoveries. I think we may be on the verge of vast numbers of dramatic therapeutic interventions used as a cloning technique in stem cell research. The New Zealand Government is very exercised about that at the moment. You’ll have heard this week that the Australian Government has decided that that should be allowed. Our own N.Z. Government – just a week ago – has passed legislation in the new Hazno Act which bans reproductive cloning – the kind of cloning allowed in the novel – but allows therapeutic cloning. ‘We may be on the verge through these technologies of saving many lives and improving the health of a vast number of others. Where treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, all sorts of respiratory problems like burns and other traumas, all sorts of organ tissue problems like coronary problems, liver problems, spinal lesions which cause total paralysis might be capable of cure by the use of stem cells produced by therapeutic cloning. ‘It is my belief that we have a moral responsibility, at least, to look into the possibilities even though they involve the use of very early embryos. But this is not to say that science should be given untrammeled freedom and the public should determine, I think, what should or should not be possible in these fields. ‘Academic Philosophers like myself speak a lot about these issues and very few people listen. Who wants to listen, after all, to a philosopher! You are obliged to at the moment and I am making the most of it…But, when a novelist takes up these facts which are very carefully researched, and makes out of them a tale which is gripping and compelling, and roots these facts in the kinds of desires that strike us all as very possible and very powerful then suddenly these issues lose all the dustiness of academia and become pressing issues. Issues which, currently, are worrying governments all over the world. The United States and European governments are all legislating on precisely these matters. ‘New Zealand, at the moment, lags behind all other western developed countries except Italy. Italy? Is the country where you might expect the most conservative regulations on these matters but the Vatican is opposed to regulations which assist reproduction as it is opposed to assisted reproduction so to have a law which regulates it would be to give it its impremato. ‘The result is that Professor Antinori under the Vatican can do more heroic things in these areas than doctors in most other parts of the world. This story isn’t fantasy – this story, I regard, as faction. These are issues we all need to think about and this country of ours needs to make decisions about. ‘I recommend this novel as the most gripping and interesting way of getting to grips with these problems and making your contribution to the public discussion. I want to congratulate Barbara on the work she has done and thank her for the enjoyment she has certainly given me in reading her manuscript.’ |