Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL]

My Lords, I begin by reminding noble Lords that this amendment is about the use of human-animal embryos, and the proposal is that they should not be used if reasonable alternatives are available. The debate has rather turned into a conception of the amendment as an attack on all embryonic research, which plainly it is not. It does not seek to make the world rotate in the reverse direction. The noble Lords, Lord Walton and Lord Patel, have both described the amendment as unnecessary—the noble Lord, Lord Patel, because scientists are so fixated on purity that they would not do anything other than what the amendment suggests. I have to say that that is not my experience. The noble Lord, Lord May, thinks that acceptance of the amendment would somehow inhibit research, which was a point not agreed on by his colleagues. I want to broaden the debate and talk about what the amendment seeks to do and what effects it might have. We have been told—and, therefore, most journalists and members of the public believe—that most future cures lie with embryonic stem cell research, that there is a shortage of human eggs necessary for such research and that, therefore, we should use animal eggs to create admixed human embryos. There are still big doubts about whether these cells will yield any treatment at all and it is my contention, which I hope to demonstrate, that the proposals are unproven, unnecessary and unethical. First, they are unproven. Embryonic stem cells are difficult to obtain, develop and maintain. They are unstable, and mutate in culture. The fact that they produce cancerous tumours when transplanted into animals has led to an understandable reticence in using them in any human therapeutic trials. It is clear that clone cells, used to address the problem of immune rejection, are not normal cells. That is why it took 277 attempts to produce Dolly the sheep and why no one has yet grown a human clone to a stage mature enough to harvest stem cells from it. Secondly, embryonic stem cells obtained from animals are unnecessary. The ethical alternative of adult stem cells is already used to treat more than 70 diseases and, similarly, umbilical cord stem cells are being used in treatments and are easily and cheaply harvested. The website of the National Institutes of Health this month shows 2,170 clinical trials involving adult stem cells, 125 of which involved cord blood stem cells, but not one clinical trial in humans involving embryonic stem cells. That says volumes and it is not an exceptional month. Adult stem cells require limited, if any, manipulation and are readily available from a number of sources, comparatively at least. They are already providing cures in humans and there are no ethical concerns in their use, making them acceptable to virtually all patients and healthcare providers. A number of people have referred to the fact—and I return to it now—that the use of embryonic stem cells is believed to be unethical by large sections of the British community, including scientists, who regard human embryos as vulnerable human lives worthy of respect and protection. Many believe that the production of animal-human hybrids crosses a moral Rubicon and, of course, a species barrier, and that the ““end”” of providing treatments, if it were technically possible, does not justify the ““means”” of destroying human life even at its earliest stage. The morning after the other place had voted to allow the creation of animal-human embryos, Mark Henderson, the science correspondent in the Times, who led a vigorous campaign for cloned animal-human embryos, struck a note of sober caution. He wrote that, "““admixed embryos … are not going to lead to immediate medical breakthroughs … any insight they might offer into diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s are probably years away””." But, "““they could be used to investigate how diabetes and motor neurone disease progress and to develop and test new drugs””." Those are valuable things. But if Mark Henderson, the enthusiast, is now so cautious, we may conclude that some of the claims made in this House and in another place have been somewhat overstated. In this connection, I go back to a debate held in this Chamber around 15 years ago, when the promises were extravagant and imminent. Finally, in these uncertain economic times, but also in any good stewardship, we should be investing most heavily in those research avenues which are most likely to produce cures in the foreseeable future with fair certainty. It is not simply a matter of keeping all avenues open but of putting our money into research that is likely to yield results affecting people and not necessarily extending the boundaries of human knowledge as an end in itself. I strongly urge noble Lords to lend their support to Amendment No. 2A.