Question
To ask Her Majesty’s Government further to the Written Answer by Earl Howe on 19 June (WA 48), what reasons the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has provided for not consulting the general public on the matter of somatic cell nuclear transfer being used to correct mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) mutations and rescuing the metabolic function of pluripotent cells from existing patients with inherited mtDNA diseases; and why the HFEA’s Scientific and Clinical Advances Advisory Committee is not recorded as having discussed the matter at its meeting on 12 June when reviewing the paper by Tachibana et al. in accordance with the concluding sentence of that paper’s discussion section.[HL1113]
Answer
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has advised that on the question of consulting the general public on the matter of somatic cell nuclear transfer being used to correct mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) mutations and rescuing the metabolic function of pluripotent cells from existing patients with inherited mtDNA diseases, it has nothing further to add to the information I gave the noble Lord in my Written Answer of 3 June 2013 Official Report, col. WA114.
The HFEA has also advised that the minutes of the 12 June 2013 meeting of the Authority's Scientific and Clinical Advances Advisory Committee are not yet finalised but will be available on the HFEA website in due course.