Lord Alton of Liverpool – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Alton of Liverpool on 2016-01-14.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority can confirm that a stated aim of the proposed research to perform genome editing in human embryos by researchers at the Francis Crick Institute has been to better understand why miscarriages occur in some pregnancies; if so, whether they can disclose which specific assay the researchers concerned have proposed using to determine whether embryos subjected to gene editing might be either able or unable to implant in a womb; and if not, why not.
Lord Prior of Brampton
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990, as amended, permits the editing of genes in human embryos for research purposes only. It is illegal under the Act to place such embryos in a woman. There are no plans to change this.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority has advised that its licence committee considered an application to use CRISPR-Cas9 (a genome editing technique) in one of their licensed research projects on 14 January 2016. The outcome of the committee’s consideration and a description of the research will be made public as soon as the minutes have been agreed and the applicant has been informed.
