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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

I have much sympathy with what noble Lords have said. My professional friend, the noble Lord, Lord Winston, spoke about the tests. The test of a stem cell’s pluripotency would apply also to induced pluripotent cells. They would have to be tested for efficacy by using that kind of test—and that is the standard test. One cannot conduct such chimera tests in humans; they have to be done in animals, using human stem cells. I agree with my noble and right reverend friend Lord Harries of Pentregarth that what scientists are seeking is to use cytoplasmic hybrid embryos. As I said previously, the transfer of a somatic adult cell nucleus into an animal egg from which the nucleus is removed—it might even be possible to remove mitochondria, but that is a separate discussion—and removal of the stem cells from early blastocysts is 99.9 per cent, if not 100 per cent, human DNA. In that respect, as my noble and right reverend friend said, it could be regarded as a human embryo. To produce stem cell lines that carry the disease genes that occur in humans, but not in animals, is what scientists are seeking to do. These stem cells are useful in testing how these diseases developed and how to change these chromosomes by genetic manipulation. They are used also in future drug development. Avastin was developed by using such experiments, as my noble friend Lord Winston described.