Mal Fletcher comments

The argument has raged between these two camps for some time. Now, however, a third element has entered the debate - the use of hybrid technologies.

It is a dangerous path we tread when we seek to interfere with the natural order at its most basic level. With hybrid technologies we are not simply using 'parts' from one life form to help another, we are essentially trying to create, in the test tube, the basic material for a new life form - and one which is part human.

Some will argue that we're only talking about cells, not entire beings. The point remains, though, that these cells represent the building blocks of a half-human life form. This ought to be no less shocking to us than cloning human life, which is frowned upon, indeed illegal, in most civilized countries. And who's to say that if we condone and financially underwrite such activities today, we won't see scientists tomorrow using the techniques to take the process a few steps beyond the cellular stage. Such things never happen 'overnight', but incrementally.

No, I do not need to be reminded that progress requires change. I will celebrate as much as the next person the human capacity for curiosity that leads us to new discoveries and fresh frontiers of knowledge.

We should not be calling for a cessation of progress; simply a pause now and again to reflect on the possible consequences of our actions in generations to come. Our science is outstripping the pace of our discussion on ethics.

When we start breaking down the distinction between human and animal, we are not in a position to foresee how our actions will impact on the future. There will always seem to be a good reason for introducing some new technique fast - especially in the face of human suffering and sickness.

In 1967 a diving accident left Joni Eareckson Tada a quadriplegic. Two years of painful rehabilitation followed, where she adapted to a wheelchair bound life, even learning how to paint with a brush held between her teeth. Today, her example of hope and community service in the face of disability is an inspiration to millions around the world. Her books are read around the world and her 'Joni and Friends' organisation helps thousands of people with disabilities every year.

On the subjects stem cell research and biotech generally, she is quite clear.

'I have been paralysed for almost 40 years,' she says. 'I would love to walk again, honestly I would. But not at any price. I think it is more important to bequeath to this world a moral compass.'

'When people start killing human life in order to gain a cure, that kind of exploitation is very, very dangerous to people like me with disabilities because the weak and the vulnerable are always exposed in a society that thinks nothing of destroying human life. If we violate human embryos today we become callous, we become endured to transgressing the unborn child with a disability, then the infant with a disability, then the elderly.'

'As a quadriplegic I don't want to live in a world where the pharmaceutical and biotech industries set the moral agenda.'

Providing funding for hybrid research is a step too far. It places way too much power in the hands of scientists who, let's be honest, are as driven by short-term concerns about achieving status, beating the competition and making money as the rest of the human community.