Mitochondrial Replacement (Public Safety)

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Monday 1st September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

It is pleasure to speak in this debate, and I pay tribute to the work of so many, but particularly the Lily Foundation and the Wellcome Trust which have done a huge amount to prepare for this debate, to educate the public, to support Members of Parliament and to support some of the research.

I do not know, Mr Deputy Speaker, if you or others in this House have met people with serious mitochondrial disorders, but those disorders are absolutely awful. Cells fail to function, and people can get seizures, strokes, blindness, deafness, heart failure, lung failure and liver failure. Most of the people afflicted will not survive to adulthood. There is no treatment and no cure, and about 1 in 6,500 babies born will suffer from something like this. I would hope everybody in this House would want to stop that, and I simply do not understand how opponents of this can argue that they want to continue to inflict that sort of suffering on so many children, because that is the consequence of not finding a way to treat these disorders.

The hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) expressed concern that there may be consequences for people who are helped in this way. Her first example was, I think—I am sure she will correct me if I am wrong—lower fertility. Now, that is possible—we will not know until we try it on people—but if I had a choice between a hideous disease that was likely to kill me before adulthood or the possibility of lower fertility, I know which one I would choose.

We also heard the comparison to eugenics. This is fundamentally different. Mitochondrial DNA is very different from nuclear DNA. It has a very different history, and it is a fascinating history—I used to work on mitochondrial DNA and other nucleic acids so I have some interest in this. This is not the same as eugenics, as the right hon. Member for Havant (Mr Willetts) explained well—it is good to have him in the Chamber, even if he is not in his former place.

We have heard arguments about multiple parents and the idea that this approach means that somehow there are three parents, but there are clearly two parents. I have not heard people say that if someone is given an organ donation and they have someone else’s organ inside them, they then have four parents because they have a lot of different DNA inside them which could interact. I think—I would hope—that all of us support organ donation, because it has saved many, many lives. Why should we not allow what is, in effect, mitochondrial donation?

We have heard the view that we should wait for there to be much greater safety. My mother had breast cancer a couple of years ago and she wanted to choose which of the two most modern treatments she should have. She wanted to know what the life expectancy was and whether she would live for 15 more years with either treatment. The answer was, of course, that we do not know, because with the most modern treatments we have not waited 15 years to find out. But I do not think any of us would say that we should not use any single cancer treatment that has been used this century because we do not know whether someone will live for 15 years after having it.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

I agree completely with what the hon. Gentleman is saying. Does he agree that the motion would be better if it was asking for these enabling regulations to be hurried up? They will take into account, as much as one can, all the safety issues, and by delaying them we may be condemning more children to horrible diseases that could be prevented if we hurried this process up.

[Dr Huppert]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, but I would improve the motion in a number of ways. I would not try to characterise Lord Winston’s position as being fundamentally different from what it is. I would also say that we need to have these regulations so that the tests can be done and so that we can go ahead with clinical trials and find out what happens in humans. I hope that the Government will introduce the regulations promptly. It has been useful to have this airing of views, but it will be helpful when we have the regulations before us to have that debate. This House will then be able to vote on whether or not to adopt the regulations.