CT: Do you think the media is biased?
PS: There is definite media shut out. In a Sky interview I did, when I was asked for my objections, I talked about crossing the Rubicon and I went on to say that there were ethical compassionate alternatives using adult and umbilical stem cells. When they played it out on Sky News they cut out the last bit and they always do that. We are not allowed to give any objections that are scientific. We are only allowed to give reflex, fundamentalist, religious, bigot type objections. So the scientists on our side are not allowed to say it.
Lord Winston in The Telegraph (12 May 2008) said that if they didn't pass the provision for animal human hybrids it would not shake the world of stem cell research. He wasn't that bothered basically. On the other hand, Gordon Brown says it's vital for research, and all the people from the Parkinson's societies and diabetes societies. Probably 80 per cent of MPs believe it.
Why are they getting misinformed? I'm going to be very blunt here. Firstly, scientists are not telling the truth. They are being very selective in the way they are advising. I think they have huge vested interests, ideologically and financially, in that their research grants are coming from the Government, and they don't want any restrictions at all, they want to keep all avenues open. There are also biotechnology companies involved, the institutions have closed ranks on this, and in the media, particularly the BBC and Times newspaper would be the worst offenders in simply not telling the truth.
That brings us to the fourth ethical objection. This concerns good stewardship of tax payers' money. Apart from umbilical and adult stem cells there was a new development last year in November to produce IPS (induced pluripotent stem cells). This is where you take ordinary adult body cells and you re-programme them to produce cells that to all intents and purposes behave like embryonic stem cells - thus removing the need to produce embryonic stem cells from embryos.
Ian Wilmut, who produced Dolly the Sheep, when iPS first appeared on the scene he said he would not be doing any more embryonic stem cell research. The Medical Research Council has announced £600,000 of grants for doing iPS research, but they are not talking about it publicly.
The picture is that you've got a Government that has made this decision about going down the animal-hybrid route. They've had all these consultations and meanwhile the science has been marching on. Even while this has gone through the House of Lords there have been new advances. Around the world people are talking about iPS as the single most important scientific advance in 30 years in medicine.
CT: So it's quite an important development then?
PS: Mega - like discovering penicillin. But the media, the scientific establishment, the Government are not talking about it here.
CT: Why do you think that is?
PS: That's a good question. For the scientists, there are a number of people who have been made international celebrities through this. Research grants come from the Government and tax payers' money. If you ask them privately - and I have done this - they wax lyrical about iPS, they say this is the future.
I was at an all-party health meeting where a professor from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists said he thought in a few years there would be no need for saviour siblings because cord blood and adult stem cells would have removed the need. Have you heard anyone say that publicly?
CT: No, I haven't.
