Sir, Both Gordon Brown and Tony Blair have called for the UK to be a world leader in stem cell science, aimed at increasing knowledge about the causes and potential treatment of serious, incurable degenerative conditions, including Parkinson’s disease, diabetes and motor neurone disease. This Government has a good record in ensuring that such research is permitted in this country, but strictly regulated by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. The new Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, currently going through Parliament, is generally progressive in its proposals for regulating the production of embryos, up to only 14 days-development, in the laboratory. However, we, as stem cell scientists and and supporters of biomedical research, are very concerned about the proposed ban on the generation of embryos in such research by the use of cells for which the donors did not, or could not, give specific consent.

We fully agree that in the future such consent should be a requirement and that it would be wrong to use previously donated cells if there were good reason to believe that the donor would have specifically objected to their use in embryonic stem cell research. However, many existing cell and tissue samples and cell lines were donated, for any research purpose, by patients (now untraceable) with particular diseases, before this sort of research was even imagined. These cells have been well characterised over many years, or have unique properties and may therefore be the best samples to use for the derivation of embryonic stem cells. Such stem cell lines would be of great value in understanding how diseases develop, as well in the search for therapies.

Lord Patel, the Chairman of the UK Stem Cell Network Steering Committee, is today seeking to amend the bill in the House of Lords to allow the use of existing, lawfully obtained, anonymised cells or cell lines, with untraceable donors, where the HFEA agrees that they are more scientifically suitable than alternative sources.

We are alarmed that the Government has expressed opposition to this amendment, even though it mirrors a similar provision in the Human Tissue Act 2004, regarding anonymous untraceable “existing holdings”.

We urge the Government to accept this important improvement to the Bill, which will help to maintain the UK’s reputation as the place of choice for this exciting and world-leading medical research.

Sir Martin Evans
Professor of Mammalian Genetics Cardiff University, Nobel Laureate 2007 for stem cell science

Sir Paul Nurse
Rockefeller University, New York. Nobel Laureate 2001.

Sir John Sulston
The Sanger Centre, Hinxton, Cambridge. Nobel Laureate 2002.

Sir Ian Wilmut
Director, MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine, University of Edinburgh.

Sir Richard Sykes
Rector of Imperial College London & Chair of Trustees, UK Stem Cell Foundation.

Lord May of Oxford
Former Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government and past-President of the Royal Society.

Martin Bobrow
Emeritus Professor of Medical Genetics, University of Cambridge.

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