Mitochondrial Replacement (Public Safety)

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Monday 1st September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

There has been a great deal of controversy over the past few decades about genetically modified plants and crops. Through the march of applied sciences and advances in agriculture we have managed to feed billions of people, but I am sure that all Members will agree that we are dealing with entirely separate issues when we talk about genetically modified food and what we are dealing with now, which is genetically modified people. We have only in the past 100 years come to terms with the debilitating, restrictive and oppressive results of centuries of racism buttressed by pseudo-scientific notions that have since been proved entirely false. How much more of a problem will we be confronted with when humanity is divided between the modified and the unmodified?

I say to my right hon. Friend the Member for Havant (Mr Willetts) that mitochondria contain DNA. They are present in every cell in the body and just because they are not nuclear does not mean that they are any less an integral part of a human being. The mitochondria that contain DNA interact with the nucleus and many scientists therefore believe that they contribute material to the identity of an individual. Bioethicists have up until this point expressed almost universal consensus on germ-line genetic modification of our fellow humans, rejecting it as grievously immoral and completely unethical. The consensus is worth pointing out as we must know what the proponents of mitochondrial transfer are asking us to dissent from. They are asking us to dissent from opinion in every other country in the world. In this age of globalisation, we will be divorcing ourselves from the entire community of nations in terms of bioethics. Do we really want to become a rogue state in terms of bioethics?

No one can deny the debilitations and hardships that these diseases cause. No one is seeking to downplay that suffering, but this is not about a cure. This will neither heal nor cure a single human being suffering from these diseases. What is worse, when we talk about pronuclear transfer, is that that effectively requires the creation of human beings for the sole purpose of harvesting their useful parts. Is that really the sort of society in which we wish to live, in which persons—individuals—are created, their parts harvested and then destroyed, merely to provide for other human beings? There is no way that that can be considered ethical, whether in terms of purely rational deductive natural law, or by the system of Christian ethics on which we in this country have traditionally relied. I hope hon. Members on both sides of the House, and from every part of the spectrum from right to left, can unite on that point. I support the motion.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jane Ellison)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) on securing this debate at the Backbench Business Committee and all the right hon. and hon. Members who have contributed. It has been an extremely thought-provoking debate. Inevitably, in the time available to me, which I believe is 10 minutes, I will not be able to do justice to every point, but I hope that Members know that if there is a point that I am unable to cover in my remarks, I will follow it up afterwards and attempt to respond to them.

I welcome this opportunity to discuss mitochondrial donation and to reflect on the scientific and policy journey that has brought us to this point. As many Members have said, children are being born with and are dying from devastating conditions that are caused by mitochondrial disease. Scientists and clinicians have developed a treatment to tackle it but, rightly, Parliament will need to approve new regulations for it to be used.

As Members have said, this is not a new subject for Parliament to be debating. In 2008, Parliament agreed amendments to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act in anticipation of these groundbreaking developments. That provided a power to introduce regulations that would allow mitochondrial donations. It is that next stage that is the focus of our deliberations.

I will explain the thorough and open approach that has been used to assess the safety and efficacy of the proposed donation techniques, and to gauge the public’s views. This has not been a rushed process and I do not agree that Parliament is being asked to vote blind, as some have said—far from it, as others who have been in this House for longer than I have testified. We have asked the HFEA to convene a panel of experts three times since 2011 to review the scientific evidence on the safety and efficacy of the proposed donation techniques. All three reviews have indicated that the donation techniques—maternal spindle transfer and pronuclear transfer—would be effective, and all three reviews have found no evidence to indicate that either technique would be unsafe. To quote the chair of the expert panel, Professor Andy Greenfield, whom I have met to discuss the reports:

“In three years’ study the expert panel has seen no evidence which suggests that these new mitochondrial replacement therapies are unsafe.”

However, I appreciate that some Members have expressed concerns. Some are opposed in principle and some have practical concerns about whether we have looked at all the important details.

The decision on whether a new treatment can be described as safe is never absolute, as Members have said. Doctors and scientists rarely, if ever, make an unqualified statement that a procedure is safe. Instead, they proceed by hypothesis, evidence and risk analysis. Indeed, no medical procedure is without risk, from a cataract removal to a triple heart bypass.

There have been calls today for more research into mitochondrial donation, but research cannot be expected to answer every question. All that we can ask is that it adds to our knowledge and highlights areas that need to be looked into further and monitored more closely. We are currently considering the most recent report of the expert panel, the assurances that have been given on the safety and efficacy of the techniques involved and the recommendation of further experiments to confirm earlier findings.

The draft regulations to allow mitochondrial donation, on which we consulted, would also bring into place important safeguards, as others have said, through the HFEA’s strict licensing procedures. For a licence to be issued to a provider of mitochondrial donation, they would first have to demonstrate that they could carry out the procedure safely and effectively.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Jane Ellison]

I will take only one intervention, if the House will allow me.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

It has been said in the debate that we are not creating three or four-parent families, but given that the cells of a second mother will be used, will a child have a legal right to know the identity of the three or four people who contributed to their creation?

[Jane Ellison]

That was one area of detail covered in the draft regulations and the responses to the consultation on it, and I will write to my hon. Friend with a detailed response. A wider point is that we should surely not reduce the notion of parenthood to genes. Many Members who have spoken in the debate, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton, who moved the motion, have often spoken in other contexts about parenthood being more about loving, nurturing and so on. It cannot be reduced simply to the donation of genes—I worry that that, in itself, would be a slippery slope.

Mitochondrial donation is supported by both the chief medical officer, Professor Dame Sally Davies, and many clinicians and IVF experts, including, I am pleased to say, Professor Lord Winston, who has been quoted a number of times in the debate. Among other comments, he has made it clear that he supports the draft regulations and would vote for them.

This is undoubtedly a really difficult area in which to gauge public opinion, because it is complex and technical and a lot of people know nothing about it. Some Members who have seen e-mails going around the House asking them to attend this debate have told me that they did not know what it was about. That means that the exercise of engaging the public needs to be carried out in a thoughtful and comprehensive way. That was exactly what the Government did—we tested the public acceptability of introducing these techniques through a comprehensive dialogue process commissioned by the HFEA and led by external experts. It included events such as workshops and focus groups, and it showed that when the process of mitochondrial donation was fully explained to them, the majority of people supported its use provided that it was carefully regulated. The Department of Health’s consultation was on the draft regulations, and those who commented on them broadly supported them. I urge people to be mindful of the way to go about testing public opinion on the matter. We have to ensure that it is done on the basis of facts.