December 20, 2007

scientists respond to campaign group’s comments on forthcoming fertility bill

As the campaign group Human Genetics Alert accused the Government of ‘setting the lights to green for the genetics runaway train’, the Science Media Centre asked fertility experts to comment.

Professor Lord Robert Winston, Emeritus Professor of Fertility Studies, Imperial College London, said:

“To make a GM baby you would have to modify DNA which is completely out of our reach at present and is likely to remain so for a very long time. This is pure scaremongering.”

Peter Braude, Professor of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, Kings College London, said:

“This type of confused understanding of the bill does little to spread Xmas cheer. I suspect Dr King is referring to the desire to allow pronclear transfer in cases of mitochondrial disease. When this is the only way to avoid these awful inherited diseases, I cannot understand how avoiding abortion and preventing painful disability and early childhood death can be considered “abandoning the basic values of human dignity preached by Christianity”.”