The Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham the Rt Revd George Cassidy spoke in a debate in the House of Lords on Tuesday, 3rd March on Stem Cell Therapy. The bishop encouraged the government to put more funding into research and clinical trials with adult stem cells so that patients can benefit as soon as possible. The full text can be found below or in context at:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200809/ldhansrd/text/90303-0012.htm#09030365000075

The Lord Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham: My Lords, I, too, encourage the Government to put more funding into research and clinical trials with adult stem cells and to avoid wasting precious resources on more dubious work.

I should like to pick up on the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, about the £760,000 in funding from the MRC specifically to provide cut-price IVF in exchange for eggs for cloning. Many of the women would not be able to afford private IVF but would be desperate to have children and would therefore be in a very vulnerable position.

I also admit to being somewhat confused about the purposes of this research as described by the group now receiving substantial MRC funding. As I understand it, the original aim of the cloning licence granted to the group at Newcastle, led by Professor Alison Murdoch, was ostensibly to use patient-matched embryo stem cells to treat people with diseases such as type 1 diabetes. This was clearly stated, for example, in the Lancet in June 2004 and in New Scientist in August 2004. What did not seem to have been addressed, however, was the fundamental question of how cloning could

possibly help an auto-immune disease such as type 1 diabetes. Notably, Sir Ian Wilmut, whose father suffered from diabetes, commented that,

“transfer of immunologically identical cells to a patient is expected to induce the same rejection”.

The aim was subsequently revised prior to the granting of a licence by the HFEA instead to use cloning for non-specified therapeutic ends. I am not sure how something unspecified can be “necessary and desirable”—the requirements for awarding a licence. However, in an interview broadcast by the BBC after the award of the licence, Professor Murdoch then said that they could use cloning to,

“make pancreatic cells that make insulin, inject them back into the patient and then effectively that could cure their diabetes”.

When news first broke regarding reports of a cloned human embryo created at Newcastle, Professor Murdoch stated,

“if you’ve got a child with diabetes who is 10 years old, then I think we are realistically looking at something which will help them in the future ... We’ve shown that it will work in humans. So it is now a realistic option that we will have treatments in the not too distant future”.

Well, it is perfectly clear that we still have no cure for diabetes from cloning, and it is doubtful in the extreme whether one ever would.

I must be frank: I am appalled that certain people, who have been recklessly raising false hopes such as these, should have been considered as an exceptional case for funding by the MRC. If government funding bodies are interested in developing a cure for diabetes, I would encourage them to invest elsewhere. Promising work has already been performed in this area by Julio Voltarelli and Richard Burt, who used immunosuppression and transplantation of stem cells from the bone marrow of patients with newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes. This apparently restored the function of insulin-producing cells in all but one patient, seemingly rendering a majority of the patients insulin-independent. Of course, this is still a preliminary trial, but it would surely seem to have a better chance of truly helping diabetics.

There is also the work of Professor Faustman from Harvard, who has used a similar approach in altering the immune system to treat type 1 diabetes successfully in animals. Will the Government consider supporting the funding of similar research and clinical trials for diabetes sufferers in the UK?

Cloning, however, has been touted as a miracle cure for just about everything from diabetes to Alzheimer’s. For example, in speaking about the purported outcomes of her work, Professor Murdoch of Newcastle told the BBC:

“it can help just about any condition in which there is lost or damaged cells. Diabetes, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, spinal injuries ... the list is almost endless”.

How realistic is that? The chance of Alzheimer’s being cured by stem cells was described by Ron McKay, an eminent Scottish stem cell researcher working in America as “a fairy tale”. Similarly, the noble Lord, Lord Winston, previously expressed concern about popular suggestions for treating Alzheimer’s. He said that it was,

“going to be a hugely difficult problem and probably completely insoluble by stem cells”.

As regards spinal injuries, the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has already highlighted the very encouraging work by Professor Raisman, which has seemingly been sorely neglected. Even if there were some genuine benefit to stem cell research from human cloning, this has surely been superseded by advances with iPS cells, such as those which we heard about at the start this week. Cloning research is simply wasting precious resources that would be better spent on genuinely promising and perhaps less ethically compromised research.

Cloning in Newcastle should not have been made an exceptional case for funding by the MRC so that vulnerable women undergoing risky procedures are offered financial inducements, in order to obtain as many eggs as possible for cloning. I strongly encourage the Government to make greater funds available for studies with adult stem cells and clinical trials, so that patients can benefit as soon as possible. I look forward very much to the Minister’s summing up.

Ends