"3-Person IVF" Debated in UK Parliament

The British government continues to move toward legalizing a form of inheritable genetic modification that would combine eggs or embryos from two women in an effort to prevent the transmission of mitochondrial disease. But the controversy over the technique, variously known as "3-person IVF," "mitochondrial replacement," and "nuclear genome transfer," is far from over, and the issues received a public airing in the House of Commons on September 1st.

This was not the official government-initiated debate — that remains some way off — but one brought by a group of MPs who urged the government "to delay bringing forward regulations on mitochondrial replacement" until more research had been completed. (The British system combines the executive and legislative powers but also allows some time for debates requested by members of parliament who do not hold party or government office.) The complete transcript is available, as is archived video.

Opinion in the House of Commons was clearly divided. About half of those who spoke favored moving forward with the technology, some for rather crass reasons ("this is a great piece of British scientific advance"), some out of understandable concern for individual constituents who suffer from mitochondrial diseases. The debate also stirred some local newspapers to feature patients criticizing MPs for "standing in the way of a pioneering new treatment" or wanting to "help future generations."

Perhaps the most striking speech, however, was delivered by Conservative former minister Sir Edward Leigh, who stressed the ethical issues around inheritable genetic modification:

Bioethicists have up until this point expressed almost universal consensus on germ-line genetic modification of our fellow humans, rejecting it as grievously immoral and completely unethical. The consensus is worth pointing out as we must know what the proponents of mitochondrial transfer are asking us to dissent from. They are asking us to dissent from opinion in every other country in the world. In this age of globalisation, we will be divorcing ourselves from the entire community of nations in terms of bioethics. Do we really want to become a rogue state in terms of bioethics?

Leigh was featured in the report by the conservative Daily Telegraph, but this was not a party-political issue. Labour MP Jim Dobbin — a scientist by training — was concerned about the lack of evidence, and cited David King of Human Genetics Alert, who "fears that science is racing ahead of ethics [and] that we are in danger of creating designer eugenic babies." (Stuart Newman and Paul Knoepfler were quoted by the conservative MP Fiona Bruce, who introduced the motion.) Another Labour MP, Robert Flello, endorsed the ethical concerns and stressed the public safety issues:

To put it crudely, there is every possibility that we could be legislating to allow techniques that could cause damaged embryos, resulting in further damaged children. That is not spin; it is a reasonable assumption based on the available data. Newcastle University's own paper concluded that, compared with control experiments, 50% fewer eggs fertilised through pronuclear transfer reached the blastocyst stage-in other words, pronuclear transfer is twice as likely to cause the embryos to fail. … We might not know the result for many generations. We might not know whether some damage has been caused until three, four or five generations later. We simply cannot know that.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health, Jane Ellison, called it a "thought-provoking debate" and did acknowledge that some Members had concerns. She stressed that the draft regulations "would also bring into place important safeguards" but remained committed to moving forward. To what extent the concerns expressed will affect the final proposals remains unclear.

Previously on Biopolitical Times:

• Selling the Next False Hope? How Experimental IVF Techniques Could be Legalized Despite Increasing Evidence of Potential Harm
• Will the UK Disrupt the Global Consensus against Human Germline Modifications?
• UK Opens Public Consultation on Draft Regulations to Permit "Three-Person Embryos"
• Broad Public Support for "3-Parent Babies" and Crossing the Human Germline? Not What the Data Say