Mitochondrial Replacement (Public Safety)

William Cash Excerpts

Monday 1st September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Bruce]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Parliament should be allowed to deliberate on and debate this issue at length, but that might not happen. I understand that the Government propose to lay regulations permitting PNT and MST before the end of this year. Sir John Tooke, president of the Academy of Medical Sciences has said:

“Introducing regulations now will ensure that there is no avoidable delay in these treatments reaching affected families once there is sufficient evidence of safety and efficacy.”

In other words, Parliament should vote blind and sign off legislation permitting these procedures before the recommended experiments—some of them critical, regarding safety—have been completed.

[Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

As a veteran of these debates, going right back to 1985, I wish to commend my hon. Friend enormously for what she is saying and doing. There has been a history of manipulation, involving packing of committees, for example, over an extremely long period. My hon. Friend is right to take the line she is taking: it is not just about health and safety, but about the whole question of the ethical and moral values that lie behind attempts to manipulate genes. We all want to help people; the question is whether this is the right way to do it. I emphatically believe that it is not.

[Fiona Bruce]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention.

Even more worrying than the quotes I have cited from the HFEA is the fact that many scientists, national and international, have gone further in publicly stating that these procedures should not be authorised at all—and not necessarily because they are against them in principle, as some are not against them. Stuart A. Newman, professor of cell biology and anatomy at New York medical college has described these proposals as “inherently unsafe”. Paul Knoepfler, an associate professor in the department of cell biology at the UC Davis school of medicine recently wrote that a process of this kind

“could trigger all kinds of devastating problems that…might not manifest until you try to make a human being out of it. Then it’s too late.”