HEFA-1999 Part 1/2nd proof - Human Fertilisation & Embryology ...

HUMAN FERTILISATION AND EMBRYOLOGY AUTHORITY
1999 ANNUAL REPORT & ACCOUNTS
clinics and treatments, and who face a bewildering wall of technical
terms, statistical probabilities, and often worrying financial decisions.
This year we have fundamentally revised our Patients’ Guide to DI and IVF
Clinics, which includes detailed, impartial information about all licensed
clinics, the treatments they offer and their success rates.
In late 1998 the HFEA and the Human Genetics Advisory Commission
(HGAC) published a report to Ministers on human cloning. In
the report the HFEA repeated its policy that it would not license the
use of nuclear replacement for the purpose of reproductive cloning.
The Government had also explicitly ruled this out. The HGAC and the
HFEA recommended that these safeguards should be recognised
as being wholly adequate to forbid human reproductive cloning in the
UK. However, we suggested that the Government might wish to consider
the possibility of introducing legislation that would explicitly ban
human reproductive cloning regardless of the technique used so that
this ban would not depend upon the decision of a statutory body
(the HFEA), but would itself be enshrined in statute. We also
recommended that the Secretary of State for Health should consider
specifying in regulations two further purposes for which the HFEA
might issue licences for research, so that potential benefits can clearly
be explored: firstly, the development of methods of therapy for
mitochondrial disease; and, secondly, the development of therapeutic
treatments for diseased or damaged tissues or organs. We also
recommended that the issues be re-examined in five years’ time in the
light of developments and public attitudes towards them. In June of
this year the Government announced the creation of a high-level
advisory group to consider in more detail the scientific implications
of the use of the cloning techniques in embryo research. The HFEA
welcomed this move.
One must, of course, respect the views of those who believe it is wrong
to create embryos outside the body for either treatment or research. Yet
we believe that for many years now, a clear majority of both the public
and politicians has supported such work, which has enabled many
thousands of couples to have children previously denied them. The
embryo is the first step to the creation of a human being, and always
deserves respect and protection. Both we and the professionals in this
field are well aware that we are operating at the outer limits of technology
in a field uniquely intimate as well as scientific. In probing the depths of
human reproductive biology, decisions and discoveries raise ever more
questions. After 30 years of public awareness of embryo research there is
more moral and ethical discussion than ever before and a new profession
of bio-ethics has emerged. For that reason, and in the light of new
vi