The seven hopes of life

lifeProfessor Jérôme Lejeune was president of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children from 1987 until his death in 1994. He gave this address at the Family Congress in Brighton in 1990. In preparing it for publication, care has been taken to maintain the spoken character of the presentation in a desire to more faithfully convey the Professor’s message as well as the style of his delivery.

Ichose the title of this talk, because I think we have to face a very curious phenomenon. Today, human intelligence is, so to speak, submerged by two contrary waves. One is a marvellous wave of understanding. Every day it tells us more about the marvel of nature and every day we discover more which bewilders us. The other wave is an ominous one. It’s a wave of obscurantism, and it seems to say that the more we know about genetics, about the mechanism of life, the less we know about human nature, about what is a human. And I must say that in both waves British people are playing a leading role, in science, as I will explain later; and unfortunately also, not only are the British scientists in the forefront of the good wave of understanding, but the British lawmakers are in the forefront of the disaster in the obscurantist wave. And if I were to tell you, what is your responsibility towards the family, towards the future of mankind, in front of those two waves of understanding and obscurantism, my wish would be very simple indeed. It would be: rule, Britannia, over those two waves.

But to help you rule over those waves, I would like to remind you of something very simple. Living matter does not exist. Matter cannot live at all. Matter cannot even be reproduced at all. When

THE SEVEN HOPES OF by PROF JÉRÔME LEJEUNE you reproduce a statue, what is reproduced is not the matter of the statue because the replica is made of something else than the original. What is reproduced is information imprinted in the matter by the genius of the sculptor. Then all genetics is about discovering what produces the animation of matter. Because matter can be animated. We are animated matter. And if I could, I would say that what matters is not matter. What matters is what makes information so that matter can be animated. And to be very simple in genetics, I would say that in life there is a message. And if this message is human then this life is a human life. Matter, if animated by a human nature, will be able to build a body in which a spirit will manifest itself inside the flesh. That is genetics. That is the definition of a human being. But now, if spirit really animates matter which is the core of our science of genetics we have to wonder whether the gifts of the Spirit could not help us to understand this state of life when there are seven gifts of the Spirit. And I would like to wish each of them to you, so that my first wish would be that wisdom be with you. You have probably heard in this country that last year we [in France] had a very important centennial ceremony about les droits de l'homme – the rights of man. Well, you have probably not been told that twenty-one years after they were proclaimed officially, a philosopher proposed to the French senate, under the Napoleonic Empire, that a law should be enacted forbidding doctors to suffocate between two mattresses people affected by rabies. Twenty-one years after the proclamation of the rights of man,

“Medicine can be summarised in one phrase: Hatred of the disease and love of the disabled. If we change those terms of reference, if we begin to fight on the same side as the disease, then truly speaking, eliminating the patient in order to eradicate the disease is exactly the abortion of medicine.”

still in Paris, rabies patients were suffocated between mattresses.

Now, twelve years after this law was proposed – which was not discussed at all by the senate, it was just dismissed by the Commission – a child was born. His name was Louis Pasteur. And all his life was a demonstration that those who liberated mankind from rabies and from the plague were not those who were suffocating rabies patients or who were burning plague stricken people in their houses. Caring for everyone, not asking them: What is your name? What is your religion? but trying to help them to the best of our knowledge – that is medicine.

Medicine can be defined by very many systems of diagnosis, of prognosis, of treatments but it has one function which can be summarised in one phrase: Hatred of the disease and love of the disabled. If we change those terms of reference, if

Louis Pasteur in his laboratory (1885), A. Edelfeldt. we begin to fight on the same side as the disease, then truly speaking, eliminating the patient in order to eradicate the disease is exactly the abortion of medicine.

To understand that, I would take a very simple example. In a hippodrome when there is a casualty, you ask the veterinarian to kill the horse. But you ask a surgeon to rescue the rider. If the surgeon deliberately killed the patient, then you have exchanged medicine for the veterinarian’s art.

Then I hope that in this country you will have the wisdom to continue to make a difference between the one who does biology applied to animals and the one who applies biology to mankind.

My second wish would be that understanding will be with you. To respect every man, to try to care for him regardless of his qualities, we need to know that every human being is to be respected just because he belongs to our species. That everyone is unique and irreplaceable.

By the way, you know that in your language, as in my own language, we use the same term to define a new human being coming to life and an idea arising in your mind. We conceive a baby. We conceive an idea. Conception is a process both for the mind and for the body of a new mind. And that is written in the language itself that it is a spirit which animates our animated matter.

But now, that every human being is unique has been known for a hundred years, at least fifty years, as has been statistically demonstrated in our species because the number of combinations of genes are so great that we were sure that everyone had a specific constellation only to be found in him. However, that was a calculation. Now we can see it.

Two years ago it came into general use, the discovery made in this country by Jeffreys. Around four or five years ago he started it.

He manipulated DNA and he was able to extract a very peculiar probe of DNA which allows us to recognise specific segments of this very long message. I’m not going to tell you exactly the trick of the trade, but when you extract the DNA from a cell, you split it with a specific enzyme and then you have it migrate in an electrical field and you use the probe made by Jeffreys. The result looks very familiar. It’s absolutely similar to the bar code that you find on any object in the supermarket – you know, these various lines of different width separated by different spaces that a special optical reader will read and then feed the information into the computer, which will immediately tell you the name of the product, the quantity in the stock and the price of the product.

The Jeffreys technique tells us just the same thing. At one glance we will see that those bands are only found in this particular human being. But let’s suppose that you have studied the genetic “barcode” of a father and mother and their child. We will find that each small line characteristic of that baby is coming half from the father, half from the mother. But this combination is unique as it was unique in the father, as it was unique in that of the mother. Then we know that at first glance we can say: every human being is really unique. And we can even have a computer able to read it exactly like in the supermarket. In fact, our Jeffreys’ bands are a kind of identity code which cannot be falsified at all, and that you carry with you all your life and demonstrate that you are this very person.

While there is something that the computer will never read which is the price of that person because human life is priceless. That was understood in the way that you could not buy a human being. Now, unfortunately, some scientists make an enormous mistake and they suppose that human life is priceless because it has no price. That happens in a country which had been civilised for generations but who have recently denied by a vote what all the masters of medicine had always sworn in all the languages of the world.

And that would be my third wish that you keep some counsel. Remember, 2300 years ago the founder of medicine, Hippocrates, made all his disciples swear:

“I shall not give a poisonous drug to anyone even if required to do so. And I will not suggest such a thing. And I will not give any abortifacient drug to a pregnant woman.”

In the same phrase he said no to euthanasia, no to abortion. And during 2300 years, all the masters of medicine have given that hope.

Curiously, having the demonstration now that he was right, telling us that every patient must be respected because he is a human being, there are voices today, pretending: “But we have made progress. We can detect, very early in utero, some very deleterious conditions. We can even detect minute difficulties, even dispositions which will occur very late in life.”

We can, for example, detect the gene of Huntington’s disease which will be a very severe nervous disease after 40 years of practically normal life. We can even detect Alzheimer's disease, a terrible dementia, in some very peculiar familial cases, that will make people demented when they reach 60, after a normal life for 59 years. Now, is it wise or prudent, is it a good counsel to propose to kill the patient because these diseases have been detected early in their life during the time they were still inside the womb?

I don’t think it’s good counsel. I don’t think it’s good. Indeed, it is a heavy price that every generation has to pay to diseases. And it’s a heavy price for the patient in suffering, for the family in suffering and for the society in helping both the patient and the family. But this cost we can calculate absolutely exactly. This cost is the exact price that a civilisation has to pay to remain human.

I am not going to talk about the Gnadentod of the Nazis, lebensunvertes leben – “lives not worthy of being lived”. I would quote much more ancient history. You possibly remember that in Greece,

Spartans were killing their babies if they were not looking strong enough at birth to be later soldiers or to be later women who could carry future soldiers. And those Spartans were the only Greeks that gave humanity not one artist, not one scientist, not one poet. They have not even left one ruin. And they were considered the most stupid people of the world.

Now, the question to the geneticist is very important: why did this happen in Greece where people were so clever that one nation was that dull? There are two hypotheses. One is that by killing the baby that they thought was too frail, too fragile, in fact, they were killing their artists and their scientists and progressively they became dull. That is one hypothesis. I don't know if it is true. The other one is: it’s because they were already that dull that they began to kill their own flesh.

So my fourth wish would be that you have fortitude because you need fortitude to defend the honour of mankind. I received, in February, a copy of Hansard, which is, if I understand well, the compte-rendu of the Parliament of this country. And I observed when reading it that it was the honour of this country, that the noble Duke of Norfolk was really the valiant warrior defending the children to come in this country. And even the promoter of experimentation on tiny Britons, Lord Walton of Detchant, was obliged to recognise that in the last three years, no achievement in medicine had been made by making use of early human beings; that every achievement which had been made in all the diseases which had been quoted three years before and could be studied, thanks to freedom to experiment on human embryos – those six diseases which were Down syndrome, hemophilia, muscular dystrophy, mucoviscidosis – and I forget the others – were showing extraordinary achievement in science without one baby being put at risk by scientists.

Nevertheless, both Chambers voted in this country that a human being which is not yet 14 days old is not a British citizen. It’s not even a member of our Kingdom. It’s, for me, unbelievable that in the country of Jeffreys, in the country of Surani – I will speak later about him – such an enormous mistake can be made that very young Britons are offered for vivisection if they don't yet have 15 days of life.

If it was true that at fecundation a human being is not there, there would never be a human being there.

And when reading the conclusion reached by the vote that early Britons are not any longer a member of the human species, that they are nowhere, it comes to me to recall one of your greatest authors which I will misquote, deliberately: if what they said is true, there is something rotten in the kingdom of nowhere.

My fifth wish would be that knowledge be with you.

Nearly a year ago I was testifying, thanks to my dear friend Martin Palmer, in Tennessee because seven embryos were in the fridge and the parents were parting from each other. It was in Maryville. The name of the lady was Mary. And at that time she wanted to rescue her seven hopes who were frozen.

The judge had to decide whether they were goods which can be liquidated or whether they were human beings who should be protected.

And he decided that there were not things and there is not a third category between things and human beings since slavery has been abolished. And then he decided that custody should be given to the parent who wants the life of the children and not to the one who wants them to be frozen forever. It was a judgement of Solomon. I was very close to the judge at the end of the deposition, and he realised that 3000 years later he was to judge again as Solomon did. And again justice was on the same side as Solomon. Because you know, time and temperature are the definition of the flux of reality. If we diminish the temperature, we slow down the movements of the molecule which is a measure of the time elapsing and we freeze the time we don’t freeze really the embryo, it’s time which is stopped.

Then if temperature comes back, life will manifest itself again. So I said to the judge: “Those frozen embryos for which the time is arrested are, so to speak, in a concentration can.” In France they translated “concentration camp”. A mistake, a dou-

“Indeed, it is a heavy price that every generation has to pay to diseases. And it’s a heavy price for the patient in suffering, for the family in suffering and for the society in helping both the patient and the family. But this cost we can calculate absolutely exactly. This cost is the exact price that a civilisation has to pay to remain human.”

ble mistake, because the concentration camp is a machine to increase death terribly, to accelerate death. On the contrary, the concentration can is a machine to slow down life terribly. But in both cases the innocent are in a concentrationary state. In a bottle of liquid nitrogen you can put 3000 tiny human beings. If that is not concentration, the word “concentration” has no meaning.

Then what we have to do, is not to ask the question, whether we are allowed to play with those people concentrated in the concentration can. That’s not the question. The real question must be that concentration should be forever streng verboten – absolutely forbidden.

To finish, we come to the sixth wish and the seventh will be very short. The sixth is that piety be with you. Piety is a reverence for those who have begotten you. And it is very curious that filial piety is of an extreme modernity due to a discovery in this country two years ago by Surani. He discovered that dad and mom do not transmit exactly the same message to the baby. Because man, so to speak, is underlying some sequence of DNA on some given point. The mother does the same but not at the same point. That was the fantastic discovery of Surani. Nobody believed that before. Nobody had predicted it. And this underlying is made by methylation of a given base of DNA. That is a technicality.

But to understand what it means is very clear. That is, if an egg was produced with the normal content of chromosomes but all of them were coming from the mother with no DNA marked in the male way, this egg is not a human being. It will not develop itself into a baby.

It will just make various tissues, various specialisations of cells. It will make spare parts, skin, teeth, nails, hairs, but not build a person. On the reverse, if there is only marking of the DNA in the malewise way, it’s not a human being either. It will produce cysts which look very much like the amniotic bag but it would make a lot of them. We call them hydatidiform moles and it can give cancer; we call it chorioepithelioma. So we know by the demonstration of this special marking of the DNA by each sex that we need to have one father and one mother to build a human being.

That is a kind of scoop in our day. Because you read in the newspaper and even it was said on this stage that you could manipulate eggs in order to make, let’s say, to beget between women. That is to take the nucleus of a girl-friend and include it inside the egg of a woman so that the woman will become pregnant from her lesbian girl-friend. That hypothesis is not any longer in. It is entirely out.

We know from the discovery of Surani that nature will not allow that. It will just make a teratoma, a kind of cancer, nothing else. The same is true of the “gay nightmare” of producing a child by two different males. That is, taking out the legitimate nucleus of an egg and putting inside two different sperms from two different men and imprinting it in some uterus to be rented. It will not do. This is an entirely has-been idea. It will not be possible. It’s forbidden by nature. In the same way, a clone taken from a cell of a grown up will not be made even if you take out the nucleus and you put it in an egg; it will not become a human being because it does not have the special imprinting which is only made during the maturation of the sexual cells.

So we learn two things: that honour thy father and thy mother is really a commandment of God because nature obeys it. You cannot have two fathers. You cannot have two mothers only. And the second is that you have to honour thy father and thy mother in order that thy life will be long on this earth. Because if you do not have the genetic makeup from your father and from your mother, you will not be conceived at all.

While the last gift of the Spirit is the fear, that fear is not the one that you have when you come into the inferno of Dante. You know, it’s written on the door: those who come here, give up any hope. That’s not the kind of fear that I wish you would have. But it’s a fear of abandoning the reverence for the Creator lest you lose the respect for His creatures.

Technology is not bad. Complexity of inference inside the human genome is not bad as long as it is done in the interests of that very person in which it is made.

However, every day we are getting more powerful but not wiser. Then we get more dangerous. One of the dangers, for example, is the abortion pill, the RU 486. It is the first anti-human pesticide. It uses two different drugs. It's binary ammunition. One which paralyses the system which allows the baby to be nourished by the mother, anti-progesterone, and the other which expels the baby, for example, prostaglandin. This binary ammunition should be forbidden in the world. Mr Bush and Mr Gorbachev have agreed to destroy the stockpile of chemical warfare that they have in their countries. I tell you, this deadly pill, RU 486, if industrially produced, will kill more human beings every year than Hitler, Mao Zedong and Stalin combined.

Then the fear I'm wishing for you was expressed in an old saying in Latin: timete Dominium et nihil aliud. That means: have fear of the Lord and of nothing else. That is the true liberty of the spirit. Because you will see in the years to come that science with conscience will be necessary to avoid the ruin of mankind.