Catholic peer collapses in Lords ' after criticising embryology Bill

• Lord Brennan revived by Health Minister • Cardinal appeals for child's right to a father
BY MARK GREAVES AND SIMON CALDWELL
A CATHOLIC peer collapsed dramatically in the House of Lords on Monday after appealing to the Government to put scientific advances under greater moral scrutiny.
Lord Brennan, president of the Catholic Union of Great Britain, was given a heart massage by the Health Minister Lord Darzi before being rushed to an ambulance on a stretcher. One peer said that Lord Darzi, who is one of Britain's leading surgeons, had "saved his life" by responding so quickly.
Lord Brennan's collapse came during a landmark debate on the controversial Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, which has been condemned by Britain's most senior Church figures.
He had delivered a speech only minutes before calling for the creation of a national bioethics cornmission to make society aware of the moral dilemmas posed by fastmoving scientific developments.
As Lord Brennan revived, he was reportedly asked by Lord Darzi if there was anything he could get him. "Yes," the peer is said to have replied immediately. "You can give me the bioethics commission I have been calling for."
As The Catholic Herald went to press the 65-year-old Labour peer was recovering at St Thomas' Hospital, across the river from the Houses of Parliament.
His speech echoed closely the proposals put forward by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor in a letter to the Times on Monday.
Lord Brennan told peers: "We are now at a stage where the speed of scientific advance is very fast indeed. It is outstripping the capacity of our people to understand what is happening.
"It thereby impairs our ability to set an ethical framework in which those advances should be made. That is not an acceptable state of affairs in a democracy."
He concluded that a bioethics commission would close this "democratic gap" and make scientists more accountable to the British people.
Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor also proposed that the Government create a national bioethics commission. He said: "Only such an authoritative and independent body can ensure that serious ethical scrutiny is no longer an afterthought but a precondition of such research."
In his letter to the Times the Cardinal strongly criticised the Government's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. He said the legislation "radically undermines the place of the father in a child's life".
The Bill creates a new category of "legal" parent so that two women can be recognised as a child's parents rather than a mother and a father. It states that "no man is to be treated as the father of the child" when two women of the same sex seek treatment.
The Bill also abolishes the legal principle — upheld by the 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act — that fertility clinics must consider a child's need for a father. The Cardinal argued that the legislation was "profoundly wrong" because it makes "the natural rights of the child subordinate to the desires of the couple". Prime Minister Gordon Brown has made it clear that Labour MPs will not be allowed a free vote. Geraldine Smith MP has already vowed to defy the Government whip.
The Bill has also been attacked by Cardinal Keith O'Brien and Archbishop Mario Conti of Glasgow. The Scottish prelates said in a statement on Sunday that they had informed the Prime Minister of their opposition to the Bill.
They said that the legislation would "diminish the natural status of fathers and disturb the natural bonds between parents and children". They also expressed fears that the Bill would be used to liberalise the 1967 Abortion Act when it arrives in the House of Commons in February.
Pro-abortion MPs led by Liberal Democrat Evan Harris are planning to table amendments to the Bill. Their proposals include abolishing the requirement for two doctors' signatures before an abortion can be performed and allowing nurses to carry out abortions.
The debate on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, which was receiving its second reading in the House of Lords, was suspended until Wednesday.
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