MP hits out at tactics in vote on ‘three-parent’ babies

TACTICS USED by the “yes” lobby in this week’s “three-parent” baby vote revealed an aggressive secularisation that depicted faith figures as uncaring and dogmatic while scientists were presented as caring and compassionate, according to the Catholic MP who led the opposition to the move.

Labour MP Robert Flello, convenor of the Catholic Legislators’ Network, made the claim in the wake of a free vote in which MPs agreed an amendment to the 2008 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act to permit the creation of babies with DNA from two women and one man.

The Member for Stoke-on-Trent South said that he was hugely disappointed, not only in the eventual outcome of the vote on the amendment in the House of Commons on Tuesday but in the way the debate had been conducted.

“I am very worried about us giving the green light to something that is going to alter the genetic code for future generations. When we take this DNA out, there is no way of undoing it down the line if we realise we’ve made a mistake,” he said. The vote saw 382 MPs in favour of amending the law to allow the technique, and 128 against. Ministers said it would be a “light at the end of a dark tunnel” for famil ies affected by genetic diseases, but Mr Flello said this was a misguided assumption. During the debate the MP said he feared families would be “let down tragically” due to uncertainties in the technique. The intenton of three-parent embryos is to create an embryo with healthy mitochondria in mothers whose cells are defective in that respect.

In a statement for the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, Bishop John Sherrington said the Church, while recognising the suffering that mitochondrial diseases bring, is “opposed on principle to those procedures where the destruction of human embryos is part of the process”.

In a statement for the Scottish Bishops, Bishop John Keenan said: “Mitochondrial donation completely destroys and distorts the natural process of fertility. It is surprising that a society which increasingly favours and supports natural and ‘environmentally friendly’ products and services should countenance the genetic modification of human beings.
(See Jack Mahoney, page 6.)