Human Fertilisation and Embryology (Mitochondrial Donation) Regulations 2015

Debate between Lord Walton of Detchant and Lord Winston

Tuesday 24th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Winston]

I am very concerned that the noble Lord, Lord Patel, might get into trouble with the Whip sitting on the Front Bench. I am always in her bad books, and I would not want to allow him to be in her bad books as well.

Let me answer the noble Lord, Lord Alton. It is true that, two years ago, I said that it was unpredictable; of course, these things are unpredictable. In the context in which I was speaking, that was correct. To be fair, however, the noble Lord, Lord Alton, knows that, with the case of Jacques Cohen in New Jersey, 17 babies were born after mitochondrial transfer. Therefore, there has been some other evidence—other than that evidence from China—that suggests that this is not quite as daft as proposed. Added to which, of course, in two years, a huge amount of research has been done by our colleagues in Newcastle. They have been working flat out on a whole range of tests which, I think, have made a very big difference. Since the statement that I made in the House, three different committees have looked at the safety.

Science does not have the truth; we have a version of the truth. We have to interpret what we can as best we can.

I deeply respect the noble Lord, Lord Alton, as he knows very well. We both come from a very strong view about what is the right thing to try to do wherever possible. However, I feel here that, apart from the issue of preserving healthy life, if we decide not to vote for the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Deben, we are doing something really important. We are expressing our concern—our compassion—as a House for people who are faced with an invidious and horrendous choice.

Under those circumstances, given that this will be a limited procedure affecting very few people, it would be utterly wrong for this House to turn down the democratically elected Chamber and not to support what the Government propose.

[Lord Walton of Detchant (CB)]

My Lords, at the outset, I have to declare two interests. First, I am the honorary life president of Muscular Dystrophy UK, which, along with the Wellcome Trust and other organisations, has been sponsoring and funding some of this research. Secondly, I have to say that I have an avuncular interest in the department in Newcastle upon Tyne, because Professor Douglas Turnbull, who now holds the chair of neurology in that university, holds the chair which I held 32 years ago.

I say just in passing to the noble Lord, Lord Deben, to whom I listened with the greatest possible interest, that he may not remember that I was the neurologist on the Southwood working party, which advised his department on BSE and produced a report which ultimately led to the disappearance of BSE and its human form, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, so he does not need to lecture me about the precautionary principle.

There is one sensitive matter which I feel that I must raise at this stage. I am a lifelong member of the Methodist Church, although I at present attend an Anglican church. I know full well that from the very first day that the whole issue of human fertilisation and embryology came before this House, it was bitterly opposed by the Roman Catholic Church. I do not suggest to either the noble Lord, Lord Deben, or my noble friend Lord Alton that their adherence to and strong faith in the Roman Catholic principles has in any way influenced their attitude to the regulations; but at every stage from the first regulations to allow human fertilisation and embryology to take place, they have been bitterly opposed.

I must confess that I did discuss the whole issue of the status of the human embryo with an old friend, the late Cardinal Hume, whose father was a professor of medicine in Newcastle, Sir William Hume, who taught me briefly when I was a medical student in the early 1940s. Cardinal Hume and I discussed the whole issue, and I told him that I simply could not accept what the Roman Catholic Church has now decreed. Many, many years ago, St Thomas Aquinas said that life did not begin until the foetus was capable of independent existence outside the womb. It was a Pope in the 19th century who decreed that life began at the moment that the sperm entered the egg.

I said to Cardinal Hume that I really could not believe that a small bundle of cells carries the same status in society as a mature adult, and that that was something with which I profoundly disagreed. We discussed it and regularly went on to have a powerful exchange of views and then to decide that we could not agree, but then moved on to discuss a matter of much more mutual concern: the fortunes of Newcastle United Football Club. When, in 1980, the city of Newcastle decided to create a number of new honorary freemen to celebrate its 900th anniversary, among them were me as dean of medicine, Cardinal Hume and Jackie Milburn, the former England and Newcastle centre forward. Cardinal Hume said that it was the greatest day of his life: all his life he had been waiting to meet Jackie Milburn.