Mitochondrial Replacement (Public Safety)

Debate between Lord Willetts and Jacob Rees-Mogg

Monday 1st September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Willetts]

I confirm that my understanding is also that Lord Winston supports the advances in this area.

The evidence is pretty clear that this could alleviate human suffering, but I am not a simple-minded believer that the consequences justify whatever we do. Looking at my hon. Friends assembled in the Chamber today, many may say, “All right, this alleviates mitochondrial disease, but the price—the threat to human dignity or integrity—is too great.” I should like briefly to touch on those types of objection.

First, I do not agree with my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) that this somehow creates different people. We are not talking about the nuclear DNA that makes us who we are—the characteristics of our character or appearance. This is about a very distinctive part of DNA that has been called, for us laymen, a battery part of the cell, not the nuclear DNA, so it does not affect identity.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Willetts]

I believe I can give way a second time.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

It changes 0.1%. If 0.1% is not a change, what percentage does my right hon. Friend think is a change?

[Mr Willetts]

It is a difference between quality and quantity. It is a change of 0% of the nuclear DNA that gives us our characteristics. It is a change in the membrane of the cell so that the battery function continues, but it does not affect human identity even by 0.1%. That is why I do not believe that there is an issue of dignity or integrity of the individual.

There is an argument that this is an engagement with people’s ability to produce children that is reminiscent of some of the worst features of eugenics. In fact, in many respects it is the opposite of eugenics. Eugenics was about forced sterilisation. It was about saying to people who were thought to carry some disease, “We’re not going to allow you to have children.” This is the opposite. It is about saying to people, “We want you to be able to have children and to be able to do so free from the anxiety that they will be bearing some disease.” It is exactly the opposite of the parallel with eugenics that is sometimes claimed.

That leads me on to the next objection. We are sometimes told, “Life is a vale of tears. There are sorrows and burdens that people have to bear, they should bear them with dignity, and this disease is part of that.” I have two responses to that argument. First, we have not run out of human frailties and problems yet. The problem facing our society is not yet that we have all started to lead lives of bland satisfaction.

It is also important to recognise that these scientific advances create a new problem. For the first time, a parent—a mother—could know that she could transmit this disease to her child. We have learned something that we did not know before. If we allow people to have this knowledge but do not permit a medical intervention that will tackle the problem, we have created a new source of human suffering that did not exist before this scientific understanding came about. Now that this knowledge is available, failing to permit families to act on it would be an unacceptable addition of a new cruelty to what is already a very distressing condition. Therefore, in terms of our respect for human integrity and dignity, it is right to intervene.

Then there is the argument that we are on a slippery slope. However, the framework set out in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 is very clear that we are not allowed to intervene in the nuclear DNA that shapes a child’s identity. That is recognised specifically as an exemption in the 2008 legislation.

This is a scientific advance that does not affect human identity, that is the opposite of eugenics, that enables people to escape a potential new cruelty if we do not act on this knowledge, and that is not a slippery slope. This is not just my view. We conducted a structured dialogue to consult members of the public on what they thought. When they understand that this is not to do with hereditary characteristics being affected by an arrogant intervention to create a designer baby, they support these interventions. If they support them, then so should we, in all parts of the House.