Mitochondrial DNA and Luddites

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has commissioned three separate independent reviews of published scientific work, and also of work not yet published, and found no evidence that the procedure is unsafe.

The Department of Health and the HFEA have both held public consultations showing wide support. The respected and independent Nuffield Council on Bioethics carried out another six-month ethical review and concluded that the procedure was ethical provided it was considered technically safe and effective. Finally the matter is to go before parliament this week. If approved, initial implementation will be on a small scale, there will be the usual checks and balances, and the outcomes will be carefully monitored. But it is clear that many potentially-affected mothers are fully ready to take the plunge and to go ahead with the procedure, for the benefit of their unborn children, and their children's children. What's not to agree with?

So why on earth has the Church of England come out against the measure at the very last minute? I find myself bemused, as the only argument seems to be that the procedure has not been tested – but it has, up to the point of creating a viable foetus, and that stage requires the regulations to be changed. Worse than that, it's not the whole Church of England, but the Archbishops' Council on the advice of its “national adviser for ethics and health”, The Rev Dr Brendan McCarthy.

In essence, just one person has thrown the weight of the church against the procedure, and he is not a scientist or medic – his degrees are in divinity, theology, history, and human rights law, and his doctorate is in Christian ethics, all worthy, no doubt, but they are just not relevant to the case. It's not just the HFEA and the chief medical officer, but senior scientists and doctors from around the world, including Nobel laureates, have supported the procedure. I am simply appalled that the established church can act in such a high-handed and dictatorial way, without, so far as I can see, any debate or even discussion inside the church, trying to influence MPs to put artificial barriers in the way of a life-changing procedure.

(I'd expect just this reactionary attitude from the Roman Catholic church with its official views of birth control and abortion, but even there, very many Catholics just don't follow their church's official teaching.)

I'm not sure why there is such a controversy and why some MPs seem persuaded against, though some of the more ill-informed media coverage – “three-parent babies” – is no doubt to blame. The problem, I fear, goes right back to the 1950s when C P Snow wrote The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, which made the point that otherwise-well-educated people – including MPs and journalists – could admit to complete ignorance of science and mathematics without any shame.

The mitochondrial disease researchers say that if you sit with any random group of people and explain what mitochondrial gene therapy means, they are almost always in full support. The national curriculum now includes science, of course, but scientific and technical education ought to include, for everyone, a capacity for understanding and properly engaging with the issues of the day.  

I was given a T-shirt for Christmas with the legend “The thing about science is that it works whether you believe in it or not”. That's true, but unfortunately it's not the whole truth – if scientists are not allowed to do the science, then it can't work. That would be a tragedy for untold thousands of as-yet-unborn children whose lives could have been made immeasurably better.