| Previous Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |
As soon as laboratories were required to provide more justification for their requests to use animals in vivisection, repetitive duplication and the number of animals used were radically reduced. Is it so unreasonable to demand at least the same for human embryos? Can the Government truly say that it was necessary to destroy or experiment on 2 million human embryos? Even if they no longer believe that the human embryo has special status—perhaps the Minister will say whether they do—surely it should be necessary to demonstrate that no alternative exists. Amendments Nos. 44 and 46 would do that. I beg to move.
6.15 pm
Lord Winston: I find it difficult to understand what the noble Lord, Lord Alton, is saying. I have huge sympathy with his moral purpose, but I cannot agree with it because in vitro fertilisation at present results in large numbers of human embryos being wasted. They are literally thrown away. If they are not to be used for the treatment of infertile couples, the only alternative for them is to be used in research that might further that process in future. That is axiomatic.
Listening to the noble Lord, I am reminded that in my own laboratory a remarkable experiment has been done by one of my colleagues, Ellen Poon. She is one of my post-doctoral research workers and has been working on genes that direct differentiation in completely surprising fashions. Her work would not have arisen without the use of embryonic material, under licence, of course. Most of the embryos that she has been using are defunct. They would not be regarded as being suitable for transfer on the grounds of their morphological appearance. Under the microscope they look completely dead or inactive and are not undergoing cell growth. We are about to publish a paper. We have not yet got it approved by a journal, but I think it will be accepted because it is a good piece of experimental
3 Dec 2007 : Column 1543
Lord Alton of Liverpool: This amendment would not prevent that. The noble Lord and I disagree about whether human embryos should be used, but this amendment says, “Let us take the Hunt test at its word”. If the noble Lord were able to put the case he has just been putting to the regulatory authority, despite the dislike of the regulations he expressed at Second Reading, presumably under the Hunt test formula if no other way could be found to use it, he would be given permission to go ahead with that work.
Lord Winston: Whether one uses for this research embryos that look non-viable or embryos that look much more viable and are possibly capable of producing a foetus if implanted in the mother, one concern is that such embryos would be wasted. They would be thrown away. That is a difficult argument to ignore.
Lord Patel: My professional friend the noble Lord, Lord Winston, speaks with much more experience than I. I speak only with some second-hand knowledge. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, tries to promote in all these amendments his wish that—and he truly believes in it: I respect that—the only form of stem cell research we should allow is that based on adult stem cells, or, now, pluripotent stem cells derived from adult cells.
I accept that both these lines seem enormously promising. What I do not accept is that any other form of stem cell research, including particularly embryonic stem cell, does not seem to have much future. The noble Lord may well be right, but just now he has to accept that the fundamental research is done on embryonic stem cells. I repeat: these are chromosomally normal cells present in early blastocysts that have the capacity to differentiate in all 257 types of human cells. None of the other cells has the same pluripotency.
We have to wait to see whether induced pluripotent cells will have the same capacity. Whether they will and whether they behave the same way as embryonic stem cells will have to be compared with embryonic stem cells. Research on all types of stem cells at this stage is therefore important. We should not turn off any avenues of research in that respect.
I refer to the noble Lord’s Amendment No. 46. In paragraph (b) he proposes that much of the interspecies embryo research could not be done solely in animal models. The whole purpose of interspecies embryo work is to be able to develop disease because many diseases are specific to humans; they do not
3 Dec 2007 : Column 1544
I may be able to accept paragraph (c) but I will have to discuss it further. Paragraph (d) states that,
That is too high a standard for any research project. Not just in biological science but in any kind of science it would be unusual to have this degree of confidence in likely results in any research. That is the nature of research.
While I am on my feet, I say to the noble Lord that while we can get very excited about induced pluripotent cells, we must remember that what we are saying is that, as my noble friend Lord Walton said, inserting viral vectors into the cells makes them differentiate and become pluripotent cells which carry these vectors with them. As I said earlier, even Yamanaka in his paper says that they had at least 20 insertions per cell. If you work out the mathematics, that means for a cell not to have an insertion would require 10 million cells. To get that is a tall task.
Furthermore, perhaps I may say to the noble Lord that to be able to understand that these cells are truly pluripotent in the same way that embryonic stem cells are, he or any scientist would have to take them down to a blastocyst stage. That blastocyst is an embryo in every respect, and, if implanted, would be a clone of where the adult cell came from. Therefore, it too might need regulating.
Lord Harries of Pentregarth: I am not sure where the noble Lord, Lord Alton, gets his figure of 2 million embryos, if I remember correctly what he said. For the sake of clarity and for the information of the Committee, when a research licence committee looks at a research licence application, the application has to say roughly how many embryos will be used. It may be 100, 200 or whatever. But I do not see how the noble Lord gets this figure of 2 million embryos. It may also reassure the noble Lord that paragraph (b) of Amendment No. 46 already has to be considered in all research licence applications. They have to show that appropriate work on animals has been done before saying it is now an appropriate stage to move to try to do something in relation to humans.
The criterion in paragraph (c), as we have said before, already has to be considered. As the noble Lord, Lord Patel, and I think the noble Lord, Lord Winston, said in relation to paragraph (d), you cannot predict exactly a research outcome. The whole point about research is that you are testing something. You may not get out what you are expecting and hoping to get out. That result might still be useful to future scientific work.
Earl Howe: It may assist the Committee to learn that a briefing I received this morning from the HFEA gave me the figures for the number of embryos donated to research by patients in the course of treatment between 1990 and 2005. The total I have in front of me is 82,955.
3 Dec 2007 : Column 1545
Lord Darzi of Denham: Since 1990 the HFEA has issued licences for the creation and the use of embryos in research. These licences have been issued only where the authority believes that the use of embryos is necessary. That is a requirement of the Act, a requirement which would be kept through the provision in the Bill.
The noble Lord, Lord Alton, suggested a further three criteria of which the HFEA must be satisfied before it licenses embryo or interspecies embryo research. The first is the requirement that research should already have been successfully attempted using animal models. In order for the use of embryos to be necessary, the research should have a firm base on which the project is founded. This could be data from animal embryo research or data from research conducted through other means.
Human physiology and genetics are close enough to some animals for them to provide good models on which to test research methodologies. However, the differences which are present can mean that research which works well in an animal model does not work in humans. This principle can also work in the other direction, and we may fail to get satisfactory results in animal research where clear successes occur in humans. Animal research is vital to a better understanding of embryology and stem cell biology, but research using human embryos must not be limited to being undertaken only in cases where animal models have shown success. The authority will make decisions on the necessity of the use of human or interspecies embryos in research projects.
Secondly, there is the requirement that research cannot be satisfactorily achieved by means other than through embryo research. Among the many aims of research on embryos and, in the future, interspecies embryos, one particular aim is to benefit the development of disease models and treatments primarily through the use of stem cells. Human stem cells can be obtained from many sources, as highlighted by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, including from stem cells, from cells sourced from the adult body, from embryos, from umbilical cord blood and, in recent developments, by the manipulation of normal human cells, so-called cell programming.
Each of these lines of research holds out a promise to the sufferers of many wide-ranging diseases and medical conditions. We should not limit ourselves regarding the avenues in which research should be undertaken in the hope of cures. Embryo research, for example, provided vital pieces of the puzzle which allowed researchers to begin exploring how to perform cell reprogramming. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Patel, that limiting embryo research only to goals which cannot be reached by other means is not appropriate if we are to succeed in curing many presently incurable diseases. All avenues of research that have the aim of achieving the same goal should be allowed to flourish in the hope one day of making better the lives of those suffering today.
6.30 pm
Finally, the point was made that the research undertaken should be the research most likely to produce satisfactory results. This is in part already the
3 Dec 2007 : Column 1546
Not all research is successful. In fact, researchers in almost every field of science undertake significant research to yield only a few positive results. The results, however, are significant. A specialist regulator is in place to assess the necessity of each embryo research project, and legislation has set out which scientific goals are suitable for embryo research. Such goals include the treatment of disease. This system has worked well in the past, and is the best arrangement that we can hope for to permit embryo and interspecies embryo research while ensuring that the special status of the embryo is upheld. I invite the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Alton of Liverpool: I am grateful to everyone who has participated in the debate this evening. I shall return to this issue on Report, because it is a fundamental question. I draw noble Lords’ attention to paragraph (c) in my Amendment No. 46, which says,
- “that the research specified in the licence cannot be achieved satisfactorily by any other reasonably practicable method not entailing the use of embryos or inter-species embryos”.
That is the crux of the debate. If it is possible for my noble friends Lord Patel and Lord Walton, or the noble Lord, Lord Winston, to demonstrate satisfactorily to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority that alternatives exist, they could proceed under the terms of the amendment.
The noble Lord, Lord Patel, reminded us of something that he said earlier when he questioned the work of Professor Yamanaka and the need for 20 vectors to expedite that work. However, compared with the more than 200 attempts that Professor Wilmut had to make to clone Dolly the sheep, that seems to be rather better and more effective. I said earlier that we should exercise caution as well as optimism. Importantly, extraordinary alternatives are emerging that do not need to use human embryos. This creates some middle ground in the debate, and I am sorry that more Members of the Committee have not attempted to stand on that middle ground.
I was struck by a comment by Professor Neil Scolding, who is professor of neuroscience at the University of Bristol at Frenchay Hospital, when he gave evidence to the Joint Committee and was asked what he thought was driving this determination to have interspecies embryos and to create more human embryos. I dispute the figure given by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. The figures that I have been using have been based on replies that I have been given in your Lordships’ House about the numbers of embryos that have been destroyed or experimented on. That is the point—not the figure given by the noble Earl, which in turn was given to him by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. Professor Scolding’s point was that mere
3 Dec 2007 : Column 1547
I was surprised to hear the noble Lord, Lord Patel, say that producing satisfactory results, which this amendment would require, is too high a hurdle. In the world in which I work and live, one is expected to give some evidence that the line of inquiry pursued, certainly where public resources are being used, should have to have some reasonable outcome in order to justify continuing with it. I shall return to this issue, but I have two other points to make before I conclude.
My noble friend Lord Walton of Detchant said that there would be no immunological reaction if the cells were transplanted into the patient. I refer him to an article in Methods in Enzymology, volume 260, in which it was discovered that mitochondria can cause an immune reaction. Would not the animal mitochondria that would be present in these cells therefore be likely to cause an even greater immune reaction? The noble Lord, Lord Winston, intervened on the issue of the hamster test and said, if I understood him correctly, that you do not need a licence for the hamster test if it is for treatment rather than for research. I do not understand this, and I hope that the Minister will—
Lord Walton of Detchant: I am not a biologist, but I am given to understand that if you have a sybarite embryo from which you create generations of stem cells that are subsequently reprogrammed, even if the nuclei have been inserted into an animal cell such as a rabbit cell, mitochondria are very fragile organelles, and it is likely that as those cell lines matured, the nuclei would continue to present their DNA in those cells but the mitochondrial genome would probably disappear. That is my understanding. I cannot prove it, but I believe that that is right.
Lord Alton of Liverpool: My noble friend may well be right, and if he is not a biologist I am certainly in no position to be able to say conclusively that he is right or wrong. However, I refer him to the paper by VM Dabhi and KF Lindahl, published in 1995 in Methods in Enzymology, volume 260, and entitled “Mitochondrial DNA-encoded histocompatibility antigens”. It is precisely because there is difference between scientists that I passionately believe that regulatory authorities need to hear these arguments so that people better qualified than me can assess what is true and what is not.
Lord Patten: I am concerned that there is quite a statistical gap between the figure given by the noble Lord of the number of embryos destroyed, which was around 2 million, and the figure suggested by my noble friend Lord Howe on the Front Bench on information provided to him by the authority, which was about 80,000. I know that the Minister has been listening most carefully to this debate, and it occurred
3 Dec 2007 : Column 1548
Lord Harries of Pentregarth: I—
Lord Alton of Liverpool: I understand that procedurally I have to give way to someone else before they can intervene. I am very happy to give way to the noble Lord, Lord Winston, and to my noble and right reverend friend after that.
Lord Winston: That is a curious piece of procedure. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, was pointing out that a large number of embryos have been destroyed. He argues that the figure is possibly 2 million. I cannot contradict that. The noble Earl, Lord Howe, pointed out that 83,000 registered embryos have been used for research. However, in vitro fertilisation, as I pointed out, destroys a large number of embryos that cannot be used for fertility treatment. Sadly, they are not researched. It would be helpful if they were. I think it would be ethically justified—ethically a good thing—if we encouraged more research, but that is my personal opinion.
Lord Alton of Liverpool: I am grateful to the noble Lord, because that demonstrates that both figures are in the world of reality, although it is clear that what the HFEA is saying is entirely different from what I had already said to the Committee. I think that my noble and right reverend friend wanted to intervene, but in his absence perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Patel, will.
Lord Patel: I stand merely to comment on the statement made by my noble friend Lord Alton about mitochondria. Of course if might be possible to go further and remove the mitochondria in an interspecies embryo so that the embryo ends up being a nucleus of a somatic cell inserted into an animal egg from which the nucleus and the mitochondria are removed. You cannot of course remove the cytoplasm, because it would not divide.
Lord Alton of Liverpool: I understand that point, which demonstrates again the need for a body that can properly evaluate these issues before proceeding with further experimentation and research. That is why I will argue later in our proceedings for the appointment of an amicus curiae to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, whose job it would be to speak out on behalf of the human embryo precisely as local ethics committees do in relation to animal procedures. I will also argue that we need more balanced representation on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, argued earlier in our proceedings, that we should establish a national bioethics committee.
Before I conclude, I return to what the noble Lord, Lord Winston, said about the hamster test. When the
3 Dec 2007 : Column 1549
At this point, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment, to which I shall return on Report.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Mackay of Clashfern moved Amendment No. 8:
The noble and learned Lord said: The amendment seeks to delete the last provision in the present definition of interspecies embryos in the Bill. Let me rehearse briefly some of the history of this matter. When the Bill came before the Joint Committee in draft form, it had specific examples of interspecies embryos like the ones presently in the Bill, and a final provision which the department described as a “catch-all”. In other words, if you took them all together you had a complete description of what was meant by interspecies embryo.
The difficulty of that situation was that the scientific witnesses who were asked to comment on the catch-all provision found great difficulty in understanding it. I have not been able to find out exactly who thought it up—indeed I have not really inquired—but that is the way that the scientists viewed it. So it was not at all surprising, when the Government came to publish their Bill, that that provision had disappeared. We had suggested that the way to approach this matter was to look for a general definition of interspecies embryos, stating what their characteristics were and defining them in that way, rather than by a list of examples and then the difficult catch-all which was found to be impractical.
| Next Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |