John Parsons is a Trustee at the Progress Educational Trust (PET), a Trustee at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, and a Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. He founded and was formerly Director of the Assisted Conception Unit at King's College Hospital, and he was also Director of that hospital's Termination Of Pregnancy Service. He is also Clinical Inspector for the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and a former Trustee of Child (now subsumed into Infertility Network UK), and he has assisted in the establishment of assisted conception units in Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

After studying medicine at the University of Dundee and House Officer appointments in the National Health Service, he worked for the Ministry of Overseas Development (now subsumed into the Department for International Development) as a General Medical Officer in Malawi. He then trained as an obstetrician and gynaecologist, and was a member of the team - directed by Professor (now Lord) Robert Winston - which established the first successful pregnancy following in vitro fertilisation at Hammersmith Hospital. His research interests and publications have focused on the use of ultrasound in the investigation and management of infertility, and the simplification of assisted conception techniques.

Left to right: Professor Marcus Pembrey, John Parsons, Sarah Norcross
At the Progress Educational Trust's 2010 annual conference Passport to Parenthood: The Evidence and Ethics Behind Cross-Border Reproductive Care
Photograph by MacKenna Roberts