Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill

Part of Orders of the Day – in the House of Commons at 6:10 pm on 12 May 2008.

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Photo of Brian Iddon Brian Iddon Labour, Bolton South East 6:10, 12 May 2008

I am an enthusiastic supporter of the Bill. If anyone is in any doubt about any of its clauses, I recommend that they read the excellent debates in the other place, which were of a very high standard. I congratulate our peers, who have considerable expertise. I would particularly congratulate Lord Darzi of Denham and Baroness Royall of Blaisdon on the professional way in which they steered the Bill through the other place.

Personally, I am excited about the potential for research that will be made possible by the application of the Bill when enacted. It can bring about a major step change in the advance of medical research. There have been important milestones on this route, many of which were controversial and were opposed vigorously in their own day. Fortunately, society has grown to accept those technologies today, so let me mention one or two examples.

Organ transplant surgery was pioneered in South Africa, especially by Christiaan Barnard's work on heart transplant surgery in December 1967. He initially met a lot of opposition, but heart transplant surgery is now accepted and I do not hear much opposition to it in this day and age. Another example—it has already been mentioned—is in vitro fertilisation. It was pioneered by Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards, and led to the birth of Louise Brown, the first so-called "test-tube baby", at Oldham District and General hospital on 24 July 1978—30 years ago now. That technology, too, was highly controversial in its day, but we have grown to accept it. On the birth of Louise Brown, the Archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, Cardinal Gordon Gray, said:

"I have grave misgivings about the possible implications and consequences for the future".

Similar warnings about the technology in the Bill are being repeated today.

Throughout time, there has been a conflict between religion and science; we should remember Galileo, for example. It seems almost impossible to believe today, but Harvey's description of the circulation of the blood and the heart's role in it met large objections in his day.

Tremendous advances have been made in the cure of disease, especially since the 1930s when the sulphonamides were bred out of our dyestuffs industry. As a result, deaths from cancer, infectious diseases and cardiovascular diseases are all going down. However, a number of other diseases—some rare and mostly devastating for the people who have them—are not susceptible to cures by the use of modern drugs or by advanced surgery. A new breed of drugs, called biological drugs—200 of them in use today worldwide—have opened up some new treatments within the last 20 years for cancer, AIDS, neurological disorders, cancer-induced anaemia, heart disease, diabetes and some rare genetic disorders.

Currently, there are some very difficult-to-treat diseases, including most of the genetic diseases and debilitating degenerative diseases such as muscular dystrophy, muscular sclerosis, motor neurone disease, Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. This Bill gives hope for future generations of people who might suffer from those devastating diseases, and it holds out hope, too, for the millions who suffer from diabetes and heart disease, and for those who damage their spines, usually in accidents.

We hope that by taking the nuclei out of a skin cell or other cell of sufferers of these diseases and creating admixed human embryos, which the Bill deals with, scientists will be able to find out how those diseases develop, with the ultimate goal of stopping them developing at all in every individual who might otherwise have acquired them. The intention is, ultimately, to lead to cures for those people, but the Bill is primarily about the necessary research. I would not want to mislead anyone by saying that there will be cures for some of these diseases tomorrow, next year or even in 10 years, as we are embarked on long-term research. Britain leads the world in embryo research, as demonstrated by the award of the 2007 Nobel prize for physiology or medicine to Sir Martin Evans of Cardiff university.