MFS: Science 'stacks odds in favour' of sick children

Dr Gillian Lockwood, medical director of the Midland Fertility Services, comments on tonight's vote of the embryology bill to Radio 4's Today programme:

"Occasionally it might be the case that none of the embryos will provide a perfect tissue match to be able to save the life of an existing very sick child.

"But the whole process of IVF has always involved some embryos being selected and some being either frozen, discarded or donated.

"Even in a natural pregnancy only about half of all embryos that get generated naturally ever turn into a baby. I don't think the IVF process is any more wasteful."

She added: "If purely by chance a couple were to conceive a baby that could, in providing some of its umbilical stem cells, be a perfect to save its elder sibling, we would say 'Isn't that a marvellous chance?' It is a one in four or maybe one in a hundred chance.

"What can be wrong about allowing science to stack the odds a little bit more in the favour of the sick child?"