Government Must Scrap Plans for Hybrid Embryo Research Bans

12.00.00am BST (GMT +0100) Wed 1st Aug 2007

Commenting on the recommendation from the Joint Committee on the Draft Human Tissue and Embryos Bill that Parliament should permit all hybrid embryo research, Liberal Democrat Science Spokesperson, Dr Evan Harris MP, who led the campaign against the Government's planned ban on hybrid embryo research, said:

"This select committee is the latest in a series of bodies - ranging from Parliamentary, medical, scientific and ethical - to reject the Government's restrictive approach to hybrid embryo research.

"It is now time for the Government to concede that there is no support for its plan to ban certain types of hybrid embryo research and require the rest to be subject to further parliamentary legislation."

On the recommendation that the Government considers recording the fact of donor parenthood on birth certificates for children to discover as adults, Dr Harris said:

"This is a bizarre and intrusive solution to a problem that has never been demonstrated to exist.

"There is no proper evidence that children or adults suffer from not knowing who their 'real fathers' are, whether from IVF or from infidelity. But if the Government wants to reduce the family secrecy surrounding biological non-paternity, and at the same time offer infertile couples the prospect of treatment with donor gametes, then it would be more sensible to re-introduce donor anonymity. This will encourage openness about the fact that the father was a donor and have the added benefit of restoring the willingness of people to donate.

"It is unfair on infertile parents that the state should interfere in their autonomy as parents without proper evidence of real benefit to the child."

On the recommendation that the requirement that, before clinics treat patients, account should be taken of the child's need for a father should not be scrapped, as the Government planned, but replaced by the need for a second parent, Dr Harris said:

"It looks as if the committee lost its way on this issue, since it is generally accepted that discrimination against some prospective parents - those who are infertile - on the basis of the potential welfare of an otherwise never to be born child has no good basis in research evidence.

"There is no justification for discrimination against single women seeking treatment, as the committee concedes. But simply saying, as the report does, that having regard to the 'need' for two parents does not or should not discriminate against solo parents, defies both logic and the real world experience of single women seeking treatment. The Government should stick to its guns on this one."