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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

In his extremely comprehensive and detailed speech, my noble friend Lord Patel has covered virtually all the points that I wish to make. In passing, I was privileged today to give lunch to Dr Stanley Prusiner, Nobel Prize winner in medicine and physiology, from San Francisco. He is a most distinguished neuroscientist, although his Nobel Prize was awarded for work on prions as a cause of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and bovine spongiform encephalopathy. Nevertheless, he has been taking a careful interest in the progress of these debates in the House of Lords, and he made it absolutely clear that in his view issues that are being considered today in relation to the Bill are, for various reasons, not being pursued as effectively as they might be in the United States. I say in passing to the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, that for more than 20 years scientists have been inserting human genes into animals to create animal models of human disease. A significant proportion of the budgets of the National Institutes of Health in the United States and the UK’s Medical Research Council goes into this research, but it is licensed by the Animal Procedures Committee and does not fall within the ambit of the HFEA. To return to the points made by my noble friend Lord Alton, let me say at once that although it is absolutely right that no cure for a human disease has yet been achieved by the use of stem cells, a great deal of research has been done in using stem cells to treat animal models of disease, with as yet some significant and quite encouraging results. This type of research is measured in years, not months and days. For example, in my field of research—muscular dystrophy—it has been shown that muscle stem cells, some created from adult stem cells by manipulation and other techniques, have been injected into muscle and have replicated and produced a certain amount of repair. The problem is how to get those stem cells into every muscle in the human body. That is an enormous challenge for scientists. But there are encouraging signs of benefits arising from such work. My noble friend Lord Alton is absolutely right that adult stem cells, cord blood stem cells and embryonic stem cells have considerable potential. Nevertheless, adult stem cells, although they are valuable, are adult and therefore more mature and are much more difficult to manipulate into producing long lines of cells comparable to those that can be produced from embryos. Even cord blood cells are nine months more mature than those obtained from the embryo, and are rather more difficult to manipulate. The point that I made at Second Reading is important. These stem cells, derived from donors of whatever kind, to be injected for treatment purposes into human beings after full consideration of all the ethical consequences and of licence under the HFEA, are not immunologically compatible with the individual into whom they are injected. Not to make too strong a point, made also by the noble Lord, Lord Patel, as I said at Second Reading, if you are performing a cybrid, where you take a rabbit cell and use simply the membrane and cytoplasm to form the actual skeleton into which you insert the cell of the skin of the human being suffering from an illness which is going to be treated by the stem cells derived from that technique, those cells are immunologically compatible because the tiny amount of DNA in the cytoplasm will not affect that situation. The cell lines could be of enormous value. I believe that to have cybrids as part of the Bill is crucial for the future management and treatment of human disease. The point made by my noble friend Lord Patel on the work in Japan and the United States on the use of adult skin cells to create lines of stem cells is right—they are no longer using the oncogene that produced the tumours. However, if you look at this week’s British Medical Journal, you will see that Ian Wilmut, who created Dolly the sheep, is outspoken in saying that while work on the use of these cells must continue, that does not mean that we should not at the same time continue work on cybrids and embryonic stem cells. That work must go on in parallel with this new work on adult skin cells. The problem with adult skin cells, even if you do not use an oncogene, is that you have to introduce genes into those cells to make them replicate and develop in the way that we would wish. To carry that out requires a virus to carry the genes into the cell. That virus is not without potential hazard. The work is important and must continue, but it is not the answer and does not outdo the need for cybrids and embryonic stem cells for research and, I hope, treatment.