Mitochondrial Replacement (Public Safety)

Debate between Lady Hermon and Julian Huppert

Monday 1st September 2014 Commons Chamber

[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.

[Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)]

May I assume—I am sure I am right in doing so—that this technique has already been trialled on mice and that the hon. Gentleman will know whether those trials have been successful? It would help the House if he could enlighten us about the success or otherwise of using this technique on mice.

[Dr Huppert]

I do not have a list of the organisms it has been tested on, but it has been widely tested on a number of organisms—I assume that mice are one, but I could not be absolutely certain—and has been successful. Obviously, if it was not successful on any other organism, it would be perverse to want to go ahead with it. However, I do not have details on the experiments with me.

I understand and appreciate that some people have genuine religious or ethical objections about interfering with an embryo. They are entirely welcome to make that case, but they should not claim other reasons as a cover for that. People are welcome to their ethical opinions—that is fine—but to say that we should not do this because we should wait indefinitely for more and more tests, so that we can be more and more sure before we ever try it in a human is simply to condemn more children to more pain and more anguish. That is not the right way to go. We do need to do more tests; there is much more to do before this will become a regular thing on the NHS and people can be saved—there is no doubt about that. But for that to happen, it has to be tested in humans—it has to be tested in children. We will help at that point, and I hope we will have children who do not have the sort of hideous problems we see now. I urge the Government to get on with this. We have to reduce the number of children who have these hideous conditions. The Government have the chance to reduce it and they should act promptly.