CGS-authored
In one corner, wearing black trunks and a red biretta: Cardinal Keith O'Brien, head of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, who alleged in an Easter sermon that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill - now before parliament - would allow "government-supported experiments of Frankenstein proportions". In the other, wearing white trunks and a silver halo: Robert Winston, the scientists' champion, who has accused Cardinal O'Brien of lying.
If this sounds like a caricature, that's because it is - but it's no more of a parody than the way in which serious ethical debate about the bill has descended into a vituperative slanging match.
This new bill represents the first revision of the original Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990, which won widespread international admiration for its balanced regulation of new reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilisation. Scientific developments since then need to be addressed by the law - and the one causing the most controversy is "human admixed embryos" (where human genetic material is inserted into a hollowed-out animal egg for research purposes).
This week, leading scientists and...