EMBRYO RESEARCH: British Parliament Approves New Rules

Gretchen Vogel*

Science, Volume 291, Number 5501, Issue of 5 Jan 2001, p. 23.

URL: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/291/5501/23a

The British House of Commons has overwhelmingly approved new rules governing research on embryos in the United Kingdom. If the regulation passes the House of Lords, it would allow British scientists to derive and use stem cells from human embryos and to conduct nuclear transfer experiments--the same technology that produced Dolly the sheep--with human cells.

Opponents in Britain and elsewhere in Europe have called the 19 December vote a step down a slippery slope toward human cloning. But supporters deny that, claiming that the new rules ensure strict ethical oversight of this research, which could eventually help treat or even cure such devastating diseases as Parkinson's or diabetes.

The measure passed by 366 to 174 in a "free" vote, in which members were allowed to vote their consciences rather than adhere to a party line. "We had no idea" how the vote would fall, says Robin Lovell-Badge, a developmental geneticist at the National Institute for Medical Research in London who works with mouse embryonic stem cells. "We were very surprised at how strong the support was." The House of Lords is expected to vote on the measure in mid-January.

Current British law, passed in 1990, allows researchers in the United Kingdom to conduct experiments with embryos up to 14 days old, but only for research into infertility, the causes of miscarriage, genetic or congenital diseases, or new methods of contraception. The new regulation would permit research aimed at developing treatments for disease as well.

All such work will be regulated by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), which oversees fertility treatments and also reviews research proposals for scientific and ethical merit before issuing licenses to work with human embryos. Unlike in the United States, where embryo research conducted by private companies is not regulated by the federal government, British researchers who attempt to do embryo research without a license would face criminal penalties, including prison.

The HFEA has already granted several licenses for the derivation of stem cells from embryos, says developmental biologist Anne McLaren of the Wellcome/CRC Institute in Cambridge, U.K. The scientists granted these licenses specified that the cells would be used to study blastocyst quality to better understand infertility.

Some opponents of the new regulation wanted a ban on research involving nuclear transfer techniques in human cells. Such work would attempt to create human embryonic cells with the same nuclear DNA as a patient. Those cells could then be used to derive genetically matched stem cells that might be coaxed to produce specific types of cells for treating disease. Last year, a U.K. government panel said that nuclear transfer experiments could be ethically justified if they were used to produce cells for disease treatment (Science, 25 August 2000, p. 1269), but opponents have argued that the work could lead to human cloning. "I fear that if we proceed as we are doing, we will open the floodgates," said Edward Leigh (C-Gainsborough) during the parliamentary debate.

German leaders have also expressed dismay about the vote. Minister for research Edelgard Bulmahn told the newspaper Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung that allowing nuclear transfer experiments in human cells was "breaking an ethical border." German research should focus on exploring alternatives to the cloning of human embryos, Bulmahn said, such as stem cells derived from adult tissues. Health Minister Andrea Fischer agreed. Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder also expressed reservations. He wrote in a statement that Germany "should not yield to calls to relax the ban on the use of embryo stem cells until the potential of adult stem cells in medicine has been properly investigated."