Response to the consultation document of Professor S. McLean

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the Consultation Document by Professor Sheila McLean. Firstly I would like to say that I am very concerned by the impression given by the portrayal of the Court of Appeal’s decision in Chapter 8. I have enclosed a separate schedule on this to correct some of the items discussed. As for more general matters, of course my own views on the subject of written consent and posthumous conception are very well known. Broadly speaking, I welcome the benefits afforded by the continuing advances in medical technology and feel strongly that the law ought not to provide a legal straight jacket, but a degree of flexibility. I find it hard to conceive how any rigid law, framed at a particular point in time, could take into account the differences in potential patients, future developments or, for that matter, social and ethical points of view. It would be difficult to review the law regularly, but not impractical to allow an appointed authority like the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), family law courts or clinics’ ethics committees to look at each case on its merits. I feel that the state should only interfere in the lives of individuals and couples where absolutely necessary. I am not against the autonomy of the individual. Far from it. But I do not accept that strangers with no knowledge of the deceased or their family situation are a better judge of their wishes than their partner or next of kin. Where there is a stable relationship and the relevant wishes are known and not in dispute, I find it hard to justify any case at all for outside interference on the grounds of protecting the rights of the individual. To me it can only serve to do the exact opposite. There is then, I believe, only two possible remaining reasons for seeking to block a case like mine – the welfare of the child or if it would offend against contemporary moral values. On these two points my situation was and is no different in substance to any other case of posthumous conception, where the wishes of the deceased are recorded in writing. This was