UK Parliament / Open data

Human Fertilisation and Embryology (Mitochondrial Donation) Regulations 2015

I thank the noble Baroness for giving way. It is important to clarify that point, particularly as it was crucial in the debate on that amendment.

Admixed embryos were required for the research to be carried out then in order to study the diseases in embryonic stem cell lines without using human eggs. She is correct in saying that. On why that research has been abandoned, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, may well remember, I made the comment in closing that the utopian dream of the scientist would be that, one day, we might reach a point where we were able to take a skin fibroblast and down-regulate it so that it behaved like a pluripotent cell. That dream came true two weeks after that legislation was passed, when Yamanaka in Japan published an article saying how it could be done. That is why the research stopped; it was not because it could not be done.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
759 c1589 
Session
2014-15
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
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