Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for the customary moderation with which he moved his amendment, which is important in this debate. Sadly there has not always been moderation outside the House. Today we heard, unfortunately, of ““Nazi experimentation””. It is good that we are not indulging in that kind of language, which very unwisely polarises this debate and does not usually lead to much light. I would like to correct what is, I think, a misapprehension of the noble Lord, Lord Alton. I declare an interest as a member of the UK Stem Cell Foundation, which is the main funding body purely for research into stem cells in this country, and which works in a close relationship with the Medical Research Council. Therefore, it is the leading body funding medical research in this field. The noble Lord’s comments about the professor of regenerative medicine are surprising to me. He claims that, in this country, we are not doing anything other than prioritising embryonic stem cells. I have to tell the noble Lord that the UK Stem Cell Foundation has not so far funded a single grant towards embryonic stem cells, nor have we ever had a grant application from this particular professor. I do not think it is unreasonable for me to say that in this Chamber. It is difficult to assess his work, so I do not know why he is leaving this country, but it is certainly not because he has had a grant application turned down because of the prioritisation suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Alton. It is important to put that on the record at the start. The noble Lord kindly referred to my television programme on the hype surrounding embryonic stem cells, with the extraordinarily sad death of the child of 10 who was hawked around the world. I simplified the story; not only did that child go to Argentina and the Dominican Republic, but also to China and Siberia for treatment. Some people are unfortunately misguided enough to do that because of their desperation. That is another reason why we must be extremely moderate in presenting the work that we do. It is important, in that context, to make clear that I showed on that television programme that none of the adult stem cell treatments worked either. As far as I am aware, the only adult stem cell treatment that really works and has been shown to work is where we replace bone marrow cells, usually in children with leukaemia. It is a relatively uncommon disease. A few exceptional other diseases can be treated with bone marrow, but we must make it clear that adult stem cell treatments have been equally unsuccessful. The area is still under development. That is the crucial issue for the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Alton. The problem is that we can never be certain in any kind of research. The beauty of the Large Hadron Collider is that we do not know whether we will find the Higgs particle, or what other particles we might discover; nor have we any serious idea of what future applications there might be for physics or engineering. To some extent, that is always true in biological experiments. We cannot say absolutely that embryonic stem cells will definitely provide cures for the range of diseases that the noble Lord has listed; it is simply not true. Nor could we say so for adult stem cells. We must be quite cautious and make judgments about how this research is directed. Therefore, we accept that a regulatory authority has to make the best assessment of that research. We cannot absolutely say that it will definitely work but the current expert opinion, which may change, strongly suggests that it is the case. Incidentally but remarkably, the professor of regenerative medicine to whom the noble Lord referred has not been working with adult stem cells. According to his publication record, which I checked only this week, virtually all of this work has been on foetal stem cells, mostly in umbilical cord blood. Again, that is a different area of science which is still extremely vague, and has largely been rather unsuccessful in helping treatment of patients so far. Equally, however, it holds hope, as we hope that it will do in the future.