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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

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 curiosity is driving the debate, and we need to give some attention to it. If mere scientific curiosity, admirable though that may be, is really what is driving the debate, surely we have a duty to say that other factors must be held to account. 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—