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Bioethic information and analysis newsletter

Following Letter

N°51 - March 2004

Embryo, my love : Jerome Lejeune in Maryville - Celine Siorac

August 1989 : the Maryville lawsuit
Seven frozen embryos whose parents were seeking a divorce : what was to become of these embryos ? The mother wished to keep them, the father wanted them to be destroyed and the Maryville law court had been called upon to settle the dispute. The judge who was responsible for the case was perplexed ; in 1989 this question had never before been brought before a judge anywhere in the world. He appealed for witnesses from the scientific world who would be capable of enlightening him with regard to the legal definition of these embryos : were they human beings or mere objects ?
If they were human beings, according to the law they should be placed in custody ; if they were mere property there was no argument against their destruction.
The mother’s lawyer then invited Jerome Lejeune as a witness. He was already known in the United States as a Kennedy prize winner after discovering the cause of Down’s syndrome. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. It was hoped that his remarkable talent as a geneticist would help the magistrate with his decision.

What is an embryo ?
Certain American scientists had already been consulted and made a distinction between the pre-embryo (up to ten or fourteen days after fertilization) and the embryo, stating at the same time that although the pre-embryo is not a human person it is more than a piece of tissue and deserves greater respect.

Introduction to the mysteries of genetics
On the other hand the geneticist demonstrated that the embryo’s first cell contains more information and is more specialized than any other cell subsequently to be found in our organism.
Jerome Lejeune explained that as soon as the gametes fuse all the human genetic information is provided. This is why there is no case for making distinctions according to the different stages in the evolution of the embryo. He compared the organization of the chromosomes to the assembly of all the information necessary for conducting the symphony of life: right from conception the symphony plays itself, in other words a new human being begins its career.

What is conception ?
In reality it is the inscribing of information in matter with the result that this matter is no longer matter but a new human being. At the beginning of life the genetic information and the molecular structure of the zygote, spirit and matter, the soul and the body, are totally and inextricably linked since this is already a human being. Professor Lejeune concluded: “a very young human being in the suspended time of the test tube can be the property of no-one, since he or she is the only one in the world who is capable of constructing him or herself.”

The judgment of Solomon
In Maryville the mother preferred to give her embryos to another woman than to see them destroyed. In such a situation we are present at the modern version of the judgment of Solomon.

A true story and a thrilling debate
The reader is caught up in an impassioned debate. On one side there was Mary Davis’ lawyer, assisted by Professor Lejeune who attempted, with all the educational talent for which he was known, to define the embryo scientifically and demonstrate how science and genetics in particular help us to understand the human being better. On the other side was the lawyer of the embryos’ father, a father who above all was afraid of one day having to take responsibility for his children, and therefore preferred that they be destroyed.
What would happen to these embryos, who were “transitory orphans in the suspended time of the test tube”?

Celine Siorac: Embryon, mon amour ; Jerome Lejeune à Maryville, ed. e/dite, March 2004.

Read online at www.genethique.org the minutes of the Maryville lawsuit (A Symphony of a Preborn Child from Pr. Jerome Lejeune)

A child for eternity - Isabelle de Mézerac

"Pursuing as far as possible the relationship with the baby that was going to die, even if it was an unborn child, gave us the time to give our all, to say everything and enabled us to begin life fully again”. Isabelle de Mézerac testifies: “accepting the limitations of medicine, without cheating, looking our suffering in the face without trying to avoid it and confronting death when it came without trying to anticipate it, I learnt all that with Emmanuel, and that is why I recovered my taste for life!” She also shares with us the comment of one of her children on the evening of the death of his little brother: “he looked at me intensely through his tears and assured me that he now knew that I would have loved him, him too, like that, until the end, if he had been handicapped”.

Uneasiness surrounding pre-natal diagnosis
On reading this book one also senses powerfully the unease surrounding  the practice and results of pre-natal diagnosis. When faced with the news of a serious malformation affecting their unborn child parents find themselves totally vulnerable, deprived of their freedom of choice and are at the mercy of medical personnel who more often than not propose nothing other than abortion. Isabelle de Mézerac tells of an infernal vicious circle like a billiard game gone berserk, and tells how before the intervention of a geneticist friend she was even unaware as to whether it was medically possible to go through with the pregnancy. In the case of lethal malformation, abortion is indeed the norm and continuing with the pregnancy is almost never proposed as an alternative…

Palliative care during motherhood
In the light of her experience and filled with gratitude towards the doctors who helped her, Isabelle de Mézerac complements her narrative with extremely interesting reflections of doctors and jurists on the introduction of palliative care in motherhood and the accompaniment of the pregnancy and bereavement of these children. Professionals of the medical world point out that the representation of the sick baby has been distorted, even destroyed by medical imagery which only reveals its malformations. They show how the doctor’s role consists of reintroducing into the parents’ view a more global perspective of their child in its existence as a person. Paradoxically the ultrasound image, by giving the mother a picture of her child in advance, makes it possible to reintroduce a sense of its humanity beyond a possible handicap. Let us pay homage in all humility to the professionals who present us, through these pages filled with hope, with the respect of life as a new concept!

Nevertheless the remark must be made concerning the preface by Professor Jean-François Mattei that the most eloquent prefaces in the world will never make amends for the pernicious effects of evil laws. In order to be sincere and fruitful, love needs proofs more than words. This is also true in politics. Inscribing the common good in the law is, for those who are responsible, an absolute requirement for charity’s sake. One would like the writer of the preface to get the better of the Minister’s convictions.

Isabelle de Mézerac, Un enfant pour l’éternité, ed. du Rocher, January 2004

Manslaughter of a new born child

The extraction of a newborn child, the point of departure of its legal protection

In France the Supreme Court of Appeal has just defined the death of a child after late extraction due to the fault of the obstetrician as manslaughter. If this legal definition is not questionable, in law one cannot help comparing the solution retained with the precedent excluding death caused to an unborn child by imprudence, even at term, from the field of application of this offence. Just before its extraction the child would not have been regarded as a human person that enjoys legal protection, and one can ask oneself in what sense the human nature of a child changes radically according to whether the hour of its death has immediately followed or preceded its birth. In France today the unborn child is at sea in a legal nothingness: anybody, a doctor, a motorist, or any other third party can cause its death and remain unpunished on condition that this death occurs before it is born.

Cass. Crim. 2nd December 2003, n° 03-82.840F-D; Dictionnaire permanent Bioéthque et biotéchnologies, bull. 134, February 2004.

See also Gènéthique n° 48 “The Garraud amendment, legal protection for pregnant women impossible”