Lord Alton of Liverpool – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Alton of Liverpool on 2016-02-04.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Prior of Brampton on 27 January (HL5039), what evidence the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority has received that a major cause of miscarriage is the failure of embryos to develop to the blastocyst stage; what records they hold regarding miscarriages occurring after human embryos that were known to be unable to develop further in vitro had been deliberately transferred to the uterus of a patient; and what sanctions are imposed on clinics in which such implantations take place.
Lord Prior of Brampton
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has not received any such evidence. With regards the role of the HFEA in granting a research licence, its role is to ensure that any project fulfils one of the purposed set out below:
– Increasing knowledge about serious disease or other serious conditions.
– Developing treatments for serious diseases or other serious medical conditions.
– Increasing knowledge about the causes of congenital diseases.
– Promoting the advances in the treatment of infertility.
– Increasing knowledge about the causes of miscarriages.
– Developing more efficient techniques of contraception.
– Developing methods for detecting gene, chromosome or mitochondrion abnormalities in embryos before implantation.
– Increasing knowledge about the development of embryos.
