UK Parliament / Open data

Human Fertilisation and Embryology (Mitochondrial Donation) Regulations 2015

My Lords, the noble Lord and I agree on much of what he has been saying today. However, in 2013—just two years ago—when he spoke at the Intelligence Squared debate, he said:

“And it’s worth bearing in mind that abnormal children have been born as a result of mitochondrial transfer. This has been completely unpredictable”.

I wonder what, if anything, has happened to change his mind about that. I suspect that he and I are agreed that there obviously are dangers involved in this and safety questions that he will want to address. May I also ask him—and I will not intervene again—whether he agrees with what my noble friend Lord Patel said earlier about the situation in China? I have with me the document Fertility and Sterility 2003, vol. 80, published on 3 September 2003, which was written by Zhang and others, who looked at the procedure that was used in China. Although we were told that this was not cytoplasmic transfer, does he agree with my noble friend Lord Patel, or does he agree with what is here in the statement that this was a pregnancy derived from human nuclear transfer?

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
759 c1593 
Session
2014-15
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
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