Mitochondrial Transfer (Three-Parent Children) Debate
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Glyn Davies
Main Page: Glyn Davies (Conservative - Montgomeryshire)Department Debates - View all Glyn Davies's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
Mitochondrial Transfer (Three-Parent Children)
Glyn Davies Excerpts(10 years, 7 months ago)
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Jacob Rees-Mogg
That must be right. It ends up being a multi-generational experiment with the lives of people.
To return to the PNT technique, it is effectively cloning. As I said, it is telling that the licence for the experiment was adapted from the licence given to create Dolly the sheep. Cloning is widely regarded as a dangerous technique. Essentially what is being done is eugenic.
Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)
The company that developed Dolly the sheep received funding from an organisation of which I was chairman. I remember visiting it and expressing a concern that it was one step from cloning sheep to cloning humans. I was reassured that no such thing could possibly ever happen, as the human race was far too sensible. This issue challenges that, big time.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
As so often, my hon. Friend is right.
The dictionary definition of “eugenic” is:
“Of or bringing about the improvement of the type of offspring produced”.
The 1922 Eugenics Congress called it
“the self direction of human evolution”.
There is grave question mark about eugenics. It frightens almost every sensible person. It is not only people who share my views who think that. In a letter to The Guardian dated 15 March 2013, that fear was made explicit by a number of medical experts. It is interesting that they chose The Guardian, which is not a bastion of right-wing reaction, to make that point. In a country nervous about genetically modified crops we are making the foolhardy move to genetically modified babies.
There are three categories of risks and dangers that have not been fully considered. The first is the category raised by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello), namely practical risks relating to the long-term efficacy of the therapy. An article published in Nature in October 2012 said:
“Pioneering work in nonhuman primates is critical for the development, and safety and efficacy evaluations, of new treatments.”
That view has been discounted by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority without any good reason being given. Current research using PNT in macaques has yet to be shown to be successful. Macaque zygotes do not survive the PNT process well, even though their oocytes are less prone to abnormal activation and fertilisation than human ones. If that is the case, surely we should continue with such experiments first, rather than relying on the fact that four monkeys have reached the age of three.