Examination of Witnesses (Questions 273
- 279)
WEDNESDAY 30 JUNE 2004
MR ALAN
MASTERTON AND
MRS LOUISE
MASTERTON
Q273 Chairman: Thank you Alan and
Louise very much for coming. I am sure you have had a hazardous
journey. Have you come all the way from Dundee?
Mr Masterton: Yes.
Mrs Masterton: Yes, we have; we
just made it in time.
Mr Masterton: We are quite happy
to do so.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed
for coming. You know what we are doing and you heard the last
session. May I say thank you very much again on behalf of the
Committee for coming and answering some of our questions? I am
sure we could go on for hours talking to you. Do not think we
are rude, but we also have other groups to talk to. Please write
in if there is something you felt you should have said but missed
out.
Q274 Dr Harris: Thank you for coming,
because your story of why you got into this position is very harrowing
and we hope that your coming here will not be too troubling for
you. You have been very articulate on the subject on the radio
and I have debated with you on Radio 5 in the past. You have argued
that you accept that there are concerns about using PGD and selective
implantation and negative selection for sex selection on the basis
perhaps that you think embryos do have a special status, even
if you do not think they are equivalent to human life. You "acknowledge
there are grave moral and social dangers if PGD were made available
as a matter of routine to any couple or single person seeking
fertility treatment" presumably for sex selection. You feel
that your own case was strong enough to have allowed it. Where
would you draw the line, or where do you think are the areas where
we should be line drawing for sex selection by PGD?
Mr Masterton: Talking from our
own point of view, our particular case could have been handled
far more easily than it was in that as just ordinary people in
the street we telephoned the HFEA at the very start. The first
thing we did was to contact HFEA and ask their advice. We had
four children at that time. We had lost Nicole, we felt almost
a year later that we would like to try for another daughter, not
to replace Nicole, but to replace the female element in our family.
We are not stupid people. We know that we cannot bring back Nicole,
but we wanted to try for another daughter. Louise had been sterilised
in 1996 because we had had the family we wanted with the birth
of Nicole. So we were going to have to undergo an IVF procedure.
By sheer chance I had actually read about PGD, when Nicole was
still here, during a forensic course I was doing at Dundee University.
It was just a subject that I had read, it looked fairly interesting
and I moved on. That is how I discovered PGD. A year and a half
later, after we have lost Nicole, I put the two things together.
Louise was going to have to undergo an IVF procedure and it did
not seem a great leap of imagination to me to include the PGD
process so we could try for a daughter and bring that female element
back. We contacted the HFEA and they said to me that if I could
convince them that the rule governing PGD should be modified for
people such as ourselves, we should make that application. Then
I approached a clinic. At that time, we were told by HFEA that
if we could get a clinic to make an application, then they would
consider it. We went to a number of clinics. One clinic said to
us that if we got the rule modified which controls PGD, they would
do the procedure for us. We put together an application to HFEA,
we were given an absolute categorical assurance in the week before
that the submissions I made—I provided 21 bound copies for
them on 27 January 2000—that every single member of that
lay committee which sat to decide on whether or not we should
be granted a licence would be given a copy of that submission.
I even telephoned the night before because I had asked during
that week whether I could come and represent our family's position
in case there were any questions. I knew the PGD issue was a contentious
issue. I asked whether I could represent our position at that
lay member committee. I said I would be happy to come, present
our position and leave after our case had been considered. I received
a letter from HFEA about a week later saying that these decisions
were made behind closed doors and there was no facility.
Q275 Mr McWalter: I know you have
issues about the process, but I want to return to my question.
As a committee, we have read the background and indeed your evidence,
so you do not need to repeat that. My question was around whether
you accept that there is a line to be drawn and I am asking you
whether you think PGD, with negative selection, that is destroying
the embryos of the wrong gender, should be available to all couples
who want to do it for family balancing purposes or other, or whether
you think it should be on a case by case basis. If so, what makes
your case qualify and other people's case not qualify?
Mr Masterton: I think PGD should
be considered on a case by case basis because of the contentious
issue of the subject matter. We have never advocated no controls.
Q276 Mr McWalter: Where would you
draw the line? You do not have to answer this because it is not
your problem, but I thought you might have some views as to what
makes you different from everyone else who might want one of each.
Mrs Masterton: After my two boys,
if I had know that there was such a thing as PGD or anything like
that and it was allowed, I would have had PGD for a girl, after
my two boys. I did not know that there was such a thing. You can
actually get PGD if you are not infertile. If you can have a baby
naturally you can have sperm selection, the husband can go and
get his sperm sorted and you can have it at the right time of
the lady's cycle for the specific sex you would like. That means
discriminating for sex selection if you need IVF.
Q277 Mr McWalter: Yes, but that is
separate from PGD. PGD implies discarding embryos which are simply
of the wrong gender but otherwise healthy.
Mr Masterton: With respect, it
does not mean that embryos of the incorrect gender are automatically
disposed of. We actually went to Italy and we donated the embryo.
Mrs Masterton: We donated ours
to a childless family.
Q278 Mr McWalter: Some people argue
that the HFEA were right not to give you permission to change
their policy and one of the reasons given was that it would be
unfair on any child which ensued, on the basis that there was
a burden of expectation. I know you disagree and you say you are
not stupid and it is not going to be the same as your daughter,
but when you say, in your evidence to us, " . . . our Princess
arrived . . . she was beautiful perfect and ours", do you
understand why people feel a future daughter created by PGD, regardless
of the issue of discarding embryos, might struggle, might have
a welfare issue because she could never be the perfect princess.
Mrs Masterton: She would be a
different princess.
Mr Masterton: She would be a different
princess. Anyone who has more than one child would hopefully understand
that.
Mrs Masterton: You love them all
the same.
Mr Masterton: We would love any
subsequent child just as much as we loved Nicole, in different
ways, like we do the boys. The boys are all individuals in their
own right and we love them for their separate personalities as
individuals.
Q279 Geraldine Smith: The HFEA found
that two thirds of the public were opposed to sex selection for
social reasons. How do you feel about that? Do you accept that
most people do not actually share your view?
Mr Masterton: No. I do not understand
where that figure of two thirds of the public comes from. For
a kick-off, I have been trying to obtain the source material for
that last consultation and if you look back to the 1992 consultation,
which is the only one for which I managed to obtain figures, lots
of the so-called public who were invited were specifically targeted
groups and you could have a fairly good guess at what their attitudes
would be towards PGD and gender selection. If you go into just
how consultative that document is, there is a big question mark
over it. Certainly when we meet ordinary people in the street
and talk to them, they ask what the problem is. We say there is
a big problem. The problem is the HFEA where they have this rule
which governs PGD and the vast majority of ordinary men or women
in the street who comes to this subject fairly fresh cannot understand
the problem.
Mrs Masterton: They say, if the
technology is there, why not use it?
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