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Response to: The human embryo in the Christian tradition

Correspondence to:
Professor Robin Gill
University of Theology, University of Kent, Canterbury, CT2 7NF, UK; r.gill@ukc.ac.uk Original version received 29 March 2005

3 May 2005

Keywords: human embryo; embryo research; Christian tradition

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

At one level David Albert Jones’s paper is very successful. Despite the high reputation of the late Gordon Dunstan, first as a mediaeval historian, then as an ethicist of considerable influence within the Anglican church, and finally as a pioneer medical ethicist, his crucial 1984 article appears to be overdrawn. Some caution is now needed before endorsing his claim that the Christian tradition according the embryo the full moral status of a human person from conception is "virtually a creation of the later nineteenth century". Dr Jones produces a wealth of historical scholarship to challenge it.

At another level, however, Dr Jones is not concerned about nuancing a historical claim but about demonstrating that "licensing destructive research on human embryos for the sake of medical progress...cannot be justified...on the basis of the Christian tradition".¹ Unfortunately there is quite a large gap between these two claims. . . . [Full text of this article]