By The Reverend Professor Andrew Linzey, Director of Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics

In my teens I read a book called The Biological Time Bomb by G. Rattray Taylor. I remember it well because I was scolded by my science teacher for reading — as she called it —– ‘a pot boiler.’ Published in 1968, the book tried to shock the reader with forecasts of artificial insemination, body transplants, eliminating defects through genetic engineering, even the creation of synthetic life. Looking back, one can only marvel at the author’s prescience. Almost everything he foretold has come true, and within a considerably shorter time frame.

Even more remarkable is his understated conclusion that the ‘production of partly artificial creatures — and later wholly artificial ones — will make it hard to maintain any longer that life is a phenomenon of mystical significance.’

I foray into this little personal history only to emphasise how far we have come — and in such a short period of time. The so-called ‘doom merchants’ in this area have been proved right. We have now entered a world in which a mechanical, reductionistic view of ourselves and nature has become standard fare. That there is little else to life but a manipulable process — is now the common assumption among biologists.

In some ways Christians have only themselves to blame. In the 60s much of the pioneering work had already begun on animals: artificial insemination, in vitro fertilisation, and transplantation. At that point almost no Christians raised any objection — after all they were ‘only animals.’ The assumption commonly made was that there was some absolute dividing line between animals and humans so that it was perfectly acceptable to use animals in that way so long as humans didn’t themselves become the subjects of experimentation.

Sadly, Christians failed to see that that assumption was not shared by many practising scientists. Far from being in another class altogether, experimental animals were viewed as human prototypes. We know what happened: within not much more than a decade the same techniques pioneered without protest on animals became the very same techniques performed on human subjects. Artificial insemination by donor, in vitro fertilisation, and organ transplants soon followed. Indeed we passed the Rubicon completely in the 1980s when the Warnock Committee recommended the legalisation of experimentation on human embryos until 14 days old. (It is not for nothing that Warnock herself previously chaired the Government’s own committee on animal experimentation).

Even now Christians have enormous difficulty in grasping that the animals who are experimented upon today are the human guinea pigs of tomorrow. In Taylor-like style, I draw attention to two future developments.

The first concerns whole body transplants. Even as I speak [1977] there is one determined scientist in the United States transplanting the heads of macaque monkeys onto the decapitated bodies of other monkeys. The purpose is none other than to prepare the way for such successful techniques to ‘help’ human patients. No, the person concerned is not some rogue scientist but rather a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences who has had several private audiences with Pope John Paul II.

Far from seeing such work as macabre or cruel, the scientist is reported as justifying his experiments on these theological grounds: ‘What we are trying to do here is to prolong life. The human spirit or soul is within the physical structure of the brain. I don’t think it’s in your left arm or anywhere else’ (The Sunday Times, December 2, 1997). God’s wide providential concern as Creator of all is here telescoped into a sole concern for human souls. “I have no doubt that this treatment will be available in the public arena with the next 25 or 30 years,’ commented the scientist.

The second example is that of spare part organ factories. Already one UK scientist has developed ‘headless frogs’ which, according to one newspaper report, ‘opens the way to human organ factories’ by the creation of non-sentient, non-intelligent human spares that can be used for organ donation (The Sunday Times, October 19, 1997).

Apparently the development could be applied to human embryos because the same genes perform similar functions in both frogs and humans. ‘Instead of growing an intact embryo,’ the scientist argued, ‘you could genetically reprogramme the embryo to suppress growth in all the parts of the body except the bits you want, plus a heart and blood circulation.’

What kind of world will it be in which whole body parts and human spare-part factories are normal medical practice? Unthinkable? Well, just consider how unthinkable, even outrageous, artificial insemination or in vitro fertilisation appeared 30 years ago.

For many years, I have bemoaned the neglect of animal welfare within the churches. Time and again, I have been told that animals are simply here for our use and that humans come first. But the result of this kind of thinking is that we have failed to understand that a world in which cruelty to animals goes unchecked is bound to be a morally unsafe world for human beings. Having failed to protest at the increasingly cruel and reductionistic ways in which we exploit animals, we ourselves have similarly become the victims of what Taylor correctly described as life devoid of ‘mystical significance.’

Taylor also forecast that ‘the day may be approaching when the public turns against science’. Well, that day has not yet arrived. But there are signs of serious disaffection. The new ability to prolong life has resulted, rightly or wrongly, in a movement for the legalisation of assisted suicide. The ability to genetically engineer crops has spurred on the growth of organic farming. The BSE crisis has provoked a deeply felt cynicism of farmers and government scientists. Not least of all, the cruel use of animals in experiments has fuelled a vigorous animal rights movement.

The truth we must learn is that a science that will not admit of moral limits risks its own obloquy. Christians who care for science — and for its reputation — need to be much more vocal in their calls for restraint even and especially when the subjects are ‘only animals.’

Revised version of an article which appeared in The Church of England Newspaper, 21 July, 2000.