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COMMENTARY
Invited commentary: the politics of human
embryo research and the motivation to achieve PGD
John L Yovich
PIVET Medical Centre, 166–168 Cambridge Street, Leederville, Perth, 6007 WA, Australia; Cairns Fertility
Centre, 4th Floor Cairns Central Plaza, 58–60 McLeod Street (Cnr Aplin), Cairns, 4870 Qld, Australia
E-mail address: jlyovich@pivet.com.au
Abstract The idea that biomedical research can be influenced by political events implies a teleological basis indicating that scien-
tific achievements occur because there is a political need. Such a concept appears to have been the reason PGD was fast-tracked to
emerge as a biomedical achievement well before its due date, occurring at a time when human embryology was still struggling to
reach a reasonable level of efficiency and become adopted as a clinically relevant advance around the world. One story underlying
the historical achievement of the HFE Act 1990, enabling regulated embryo research, steps outside the firm ground of biomedical
science and encourages the idea that Reproductive BioMedicine Online should embrace a further section enabling articles dealing
with ‘History, politics and personalities’ where these influence biomedical research. RBMOnline
ª2011, Reproductive Healthcare Ltd. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
KEYWORDS: HFE Act 1990, history, legislation, personalities, PGD, politics
The article entitled ‘The politics of human embryo
research and the motivation to achieve PGD’ (Theodosiou
and Johnson, 2011), in this issue of Reproductive BioMedi-
cine Online deserves commentary as it steps outside the
‘firm’ scientific ground of biomedical research into the
‘softer’ fields of history and politics. To be fair, Reproduc-
tive BioMedicine Online with its ‘devotion to biomedical
research on human conception and the welfare of the
human embryo’ does seek articles under the topic of
‘Ethics, social, legal, counselling’.
The article centres on four aspects of indisputable fact,
namely: (i) the Warnock Report on IVF tabled in the House
of Lords in Westminster in 1984; (ii) the reactionary Unborn
Children (Protection) Bill introduced by Enoch Powell as a
private member in 1985; (iii) the published reports of 1989
and 1990 concerning preimplantation genetic diagnosis
(PGD) on human embryos by Handyside and his colleagues
at Hammersmith hospital under the leadership of Robert
Winston (Handyside et al., 1989, 1990); and (iv) the
establishment of the HFE Act in 1990 which allowed PGD
as well as regulated research on human embryos.
Theodosiou and Johnson, using impressive scien-
tific-like sleuthing, but inevitably relying on much conver-
sational evidence, jottings, parliamentary records,
minutes from meetings, private papers and documented
conversations with the perceived key stakeholders, create
a suspenseful story to explain the emergent PGD applica-
tion in humans which, in their view, was fast-tracked
some years before its expected due date. Being active
in the IVF field in London with Professor Ian Craft from
1976,I would concur that in the mid-1980s we were still
struggling to make the basic fertilization and embryo cul-
ture technology efficient and, although we had mooted a
potential for wider application (Craft and Yovich, 1979)
including embryo diagnosis with a view to reducing signif-
icant anomalies, at that stage the latter was a deferred
consideration. Many IVF clinics started their foundations
in the mid-1980s with assistance from the earlier pioneers
1472-6483/$ - see front matter ª2011, Reproductive Healthcare Ltd. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.rbmo.2011.02.010
Reproductive BioMedicine Online (2011) 22, 408–409
www.sciencedirect.com
www.rbmonline.com
and my experience concurs with the authors that PGD was
not an important consideration at that time.
The appeal of science is that it is a progressively evolving
process, at least from the time of Isaac Newton utilizing the
principles of Scientific Methodology and escaping from the
shackles of religious dogma. The resulting truisms hold until
further hard evidence moves the knowledge a step further.
History and politics, however, are notoriously unreliable –
history being a record of events prone to interpretation,
especially by the victors or winners or, nowadays, by the
politically correct and politics being a process by which
groups of people make collective decisions. These processes
tend to cycle and repeat so one does not get the sense of
progressing forward. Nonetheless, Reproductive BioMedi-
cine Online should accept some articles as the perceived
collective wisdom of the day under a title ‘History, politics
and personalities’ as an entertaining but also relevant side
to biomedical research.
With respect to personalities, the article of Theodosiou
and Johnson introduces several who might be seen to be
worthy. The main personality is that of parliamentarian
Enoch Powell (see, for example, www.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Enoch_Powell) and the peculiar role he played in the favour-
able achievements gained in the HFE Act 1990. The Right Hon-
ourable Brigadier Professor John Enoch Powell (1912–1988)
was a remarkable man who was a powerful orator, courted
controversy and had no hesitation in speaking his mind. He
was also capable of changing his allegiances (e.g. from Con-
servative party stalwart to Ulster Unionist Party as well as
supporting Labour to victory in 1974). He was British born
but had an Australian connection, acquiring the Professorship
in Greek at Sydney University at age 25, thereafter enrolling
in the British Army (as an Australian citizen) to join the war in
Europe where he rose from private in 1939 to Brigadier in 1945
as one of only two individuals to progress so rapidly and gain-
ing numerous medals along the way including the Military
Order of the British Empire. Drawing on his deep knowledge
of the classics, he delivered many famous speeches including
his ‘Hola Camp’ speech of 1959, criticizing colleagues who
had a derogatory view of the Mau Mau in Kenya; his 1961
‘Water Tower’ speech whilst he was Health Minister; and
his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech of 1968 warning of dangers of
unchecked mass immigration from countries of the disinte-
grating Commonwealth. His history makes very interesting
reading from whichever interpretation, including his contro-
versial dealing with victims of the thalidomide sequelae as
Health Minister 1960–1962, as well as his introduction of
the Unborn Children (Protection) Bill 1985.
During the debates leading up to the HFE Act 1990, I
personally believe the medico-scientific input failed to
understand that the public (and politicians on their behalf)
were frightened of our use of the term ‘research’ which
they equated with ‘experimentation’ (viz. the Nuremberg
trials of 1945–1946). This emerged in debates within the
House of Lords, some of which I personally attended during
the 1980s when another relevant personality from the arti-
cle, colleague Professor Robert Winston (see, for example,
www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Winston) encouraged sev-
eral of us to join him in the public gallery on evenings post
prandial after medical meetings to listen to the erudite
speeches as an alternative to nightclub entertainment. It
was indeed often an enthralling and sometimes intimidating
experience to hear those highly articulate speeches decry-
ing ‘research’ and delivered with powerful British aplomb.
Colleague Robert Winston himself rose to membership as a
Lord in that esteemed chamber as Baron Winston of Ham-
mersmith in 1995, one of his many and varied achievements.
One suspects a background interactive role in the events
underpinning the article of Theodosiou and Johnston and
perhaps we do owe a debt to our colleague for reading
the events so well and saving the day.
From my current perspective, having worked with IVF for
34 years now, the 1980s debates on PGD were actually being
conducted before we had efficient control over the basic
laboratory procedures (Yovich et al., 1984), and outside
London some were reporting IVF as a failed technology
(Wagner and St Clair, 1989). I believe a further important
personality mentioned in the article, Anne McLaren (see,
for example, www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_McLaren), was
well aware of our basic embryology struggles, hence her
initial reticence about embryo biopsy. Even today, aneu-
ploidy screening, or preimplantation genetic screening, is
a challenging subject for numerous reasons and does not
yet fulfil Enoch Powell’s support to prevent children with
disabilities except on a very small scale, although there
remains an expectation of benefits in the future utilizing
the new comprehensive chromosome screening methods at
the blastocyst stage (Wells, 2010).
At least the interesting events described by Theodosiou
and Johnson resulted in a model for the HFE Act 1990
which enabled embryo research and their article makes
a good read with a perspective on that outcome. The
story is certainly plausible but implies a teleological
theme in the sense that the unfolding historical and polit-
ical events had to occur to stimulate the desired biomed-
ical achievement which, in turn, changed the political
debate and historical outcome, again not a conventional
scientific sequence.
References
Craft, I., Yovich, J., 1979. Implications of embryo transfer. Lancet
2, 642–643.
Handyside, A.H., Kontogianni, E.H., Hardy, K., Winston, R.M., 1990.
Pregnancies from biopsied human preimplantation embryos
sexed by Y-specific DNA amplification. Nature 344, 768–770.
Handyside, A.H., Pattinson, J.K., Penketh, R.J., Delhanty, J.D.,
Winston, R.M., Tuddenham, E.G., 1989. Biopsy of human
preimplantation embryos and sexing by DNA amplification.
Lancet 1, 347–349.
Theodosiou, A.A., Johnson, M.H., 2011. The politics of human
embryo research and the motivation to achieve PGD. Reprod.
BioMed. Online 22, 457–471.
Wagner, M.G., St Clair, P.A., 1989. Are in-vitro fertilisation and
embryo transfer of benefit to all. Lancet 2, 1027–1029.
Wells, D., 2010. Embryo aneuploidy and the role of morphological
and genetic screening. Reprod. Biomed. Online 21, 274–277.
Yovich, J.L., Stanger, J.D., Tuvik, A.I., Yovich, J.M., 1984. In-vitro
fertilization in Western Australia – a viable service program.
Med. J. Aust. 140, 645–649.
Declaration: The author reports no financial or commercial
conflicts of interest.
Received 25 January 2011; accepted 14 February 2011.
Invited commentary 409
