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THREE eminent professors from the School of Clinical Medicine at the University of Cambridge wrote to The Times recently (21 February) doubting that the Human Tissue Bill now going through Parliament was intended to hinder advances in diagnosis and treatment, but saying they believed that is exactly what its effect would be. The research community, they said, is constantly being urged to use human tissue rather than to experiment on animals; the bill would make that more difficult.

For reasons ¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ highlighted (1 May, p 4), I too am uneasy with the bill. I asked health minister Rosie Winterton for her response to the Cambridge heavyweights.

Winterton replied that the bill does not preclude the approach suggested by the three professors, namely obtaining the patient’s general and enduring consent to the use of tissue for research when they are admitted to hospital. Rather, she said, the bill sets a baseline requirement for consent, which need not be onerous to obtain or limited in duration or scope. She said that the Human Tissue Authority to be set up under the bill would be expected to produce pragmatic guidance and take account of patients’ differing circumstances. The HTA would also need to draw on relevant expertise and experience in building a sustainable ethical framework for obtaining consent.

But is Winterton right? My suspicion is that the bill is an overreaction to the scandal that engulfed the UK in 1999 when it was found that doctors at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool had retained organs from dead children without their parents’ permission. The Cambridge heavyweights have every cause to be concerned.

ALICE MAHON, MP for Halifax in Yorkshire, is to introduce a private member’s bill on sleep apnoea – repeated pauses in breathing during sleep. This is a significant public health problem and affects some 770,000 people in the UK. Mahon is concerned that recent publications such as the NHS National Service Frameworks and the guidelines from the UK’s National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) do not cover sleep apnoea and other related conditions that can lead to excessive sleepiness during the day. The public should be left in no doubt that these conditions can have debilitating effects if untreated, but that effective treatments exist and can produce significant improvements.

Under the Mahon bill, the health secretary would be empowered to see that the NHS is equipped to diagnose and manage sleep apnoea and other medical conditions that cause sleepiness during the day. The NHS’s Primary Care Trusts would be instructed to prioritise such conditions to reflect the debilitating effects they can cause if left untreated. The bill would also require NICE to prioritise a review of the clinical management of sleep apnoea and related conditions.

If Mahon succeeds with her bill many of us will sleep more peacefully in our beds.