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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

My Lords, it may be helpful to the House if I raise something that I did not raise in the previous debate. Almost certainly I am the only Member of your Lordships’ House who has regularly approached patients, asking for consent to use their embryos for the purposes of generating stem cells. The consent procedure is different from that in any other form of medical research with which I have been involved for many years. I hope that noble Lords will understand that I am speaking with complete probity. When we deal with any embryo research, we make sure that we give not just the routine information you might give somebody about other forms of research—patients attend seminars and talks about the value of stem cell biology and there is a great deal of information given to them that is well beyond what you might give about other tissues that might be taken, for example, during an operation. There are not many centres doing embryonic research of this kind in Britain—I think that only a handful of licences have been given. I imagine that what has happened in my experience at Hammersmith Hospital must reflect what happens in other units. In practice, we make absolutely clear to patients that we hope to generate embryonic stem cells in order to produce stem cell lines for whatever purpose may be appropriate. It is very open-ended. In effect, the consent covers pretty well every procedure. It is true that some of our patients will not have heard of admixed embryos but that is perhaps the one exception. That apart, the patients to whom I have spoken and those to whom my colleagues have spoken give their embryos entirely freely for whatever stem cell research might be appropriate. So, in a sense, the consent has already been obtained, even though it has not been specified for a specific research project. I do not think it is quite fair to say that it is like the post in Arundel, as the noble Baroness suggested. It is a little different because the one concern that these patients have is that some of their genetic material might become public. That has always been a slight problem. In practice, all these research projects are anonymised for that very reason. Therefore, if a stem cell line is produced, there will be no way of knowing later whether it relates to a specific patient. When the stem cell line goes to the Stem Cell Bank, which is run by the Medical Research Council and my colleagues, it is not known which patient has given those cells. The anonymity is maintained to ensure that there is no risk of the genetic material becoming public, and that is why the patient cannot be traced—not for any other reason in the process.