This week at the Progress Educational Trust (20 September 2021)

The Progress Educational Trust (PET) is delighted to announce that registration is now open for its next three free-to-attend online events, all of which will be chaired by PET Director Sarah Norcross. The first of these events is taking place next week.

'#ExtendTheLimit: What Now For Egg Freezing?' will take place on Tuesday 28 September 2021 from 5.30pm-7.30pm (BST).

Speakers will include representatives of Parliament (Baroness Ruth Deech), professional bodies (Professor Jason Kasraie), patient campaigning (Sharon Jones), Government (Steve Pugh) and regulators (Joanne Anton).

This event is produced with the support of the British Fertility Society, CooperSurgical, the London Egg Bank, the Senior Infertility Nurse Group and TMRW Life Sciences.

Find out more and register here. If tweeting about this event, please use the hashtag #ExtendTheLimit

'Advances in Assisted Reproduction: What Can We Expect?' will take place on Wednesday 6 October 2021 from 5.30pm-7pm (BST).

Speakers will include Professor Rod Mitchell, Professor Evelyn Telfer, Professor Adèle Marston and Professor David Albertini.

This event is produced in partnership with the Scottish Government.

Find out more and register here. If tweeting about this event, please use the hashtag #FertilityFuture

'Female Fertility: What Does the Future Hold?' will take place on Wednesday 20 October 2021 from 5.30pm-7pm (BST).

Speakers will include Professor Siladitya Bhattacharya, Professor Colin Duncan, Professor Richard Anderson and Dr Rita Vassena.

This event is produced in partnership with the Scottish Government.

Find out more and register here. If tweeting about this event, please use the hashtag #FertilityFuture

Meanwhile, registration is also open for PET's 2021 Annual Conference, which will be held online from 9.15am-5.45pm (GMT) on Wednesday 1 December 2021. This year's conference is entitled 'Reproducing Regulation: Who Regulates Fertility and How?'.

Note that there is an early-bird discount on the standard attendance fee, if you register before 30 September. Find out more and register here.

The conference will ask whether laws need to be changed, and if so how, in light of recent scientific innovations and changing views of what constitutes a family. Conference sessions include:

1. The Role of the Regulator: UK Perspectives
2. Fertility Across Jurisdictions: International Perspectives
3. All Families Great and Small: Changing Family Forms
4. New Frontiers: Futureproofing Fertility and Embryo Law

Confirmed conference speakers and chairs include:

• Julia Chain (Chair of the HFEA)
• Professor Carlos Calhaz-Jorge (Chair of ESHRE)
• Dr Louise Strong (Director of Consumer Protection at the UK Government's Competition and Markets Authority)
• Dr Jamie Metzl (Technology and Healthcare Futurist, and member of the WHO's Advisory Committee on Genome Editing)
• Professor Emily Jackson (Professor of Law at the LSE)
• Dr Raj Mathur (Chair of the British Fertility Society)
• Juliet Tizzard (Director of Policy and Partnerships at the Health Research Authority)
• Professor Insoo Hyun (Chair of the Ethics Committee of the International Society for Stem Cell Research)
• Professor Anja Bisgaard Pinborg (Chief Consultant at Rigshospitalet's Juliane Marie Centre)
• Professor Sarah Franklin (Director of the University of Cambridge's Reproductive Sociology Research Group)
• Professor Allan Pacey (Professor of Andrology at the University of Sheffield)
• Professor Heidi Mertes (Professor of Ethics at Ghent University)
• Natalie Sutherland (Partner at Burgess Mee Family Law)
• Dr Edgar Mocanu (Consultant in Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the Rotunda Hospital Dublin)
• Katherine O'Brien (Associate Director of Communications and Campaigns at BPAS)
• Ana Pereira Daoud (Researcher at Maastricht University, investigating ethical and policy implications of stem-cell-based embryo models)
• Andrew Powell (Specialist Family Law Barrister at 4 Paper Buildings)
• Fiona Fox (Chief Executive of the Science Media Centre)
• Dr Nathalie Vermeulen (Senior Research Specialist at ESHRE)
• Sarah Norcross (Director of PET)

This conference is supported by the Anne McLaren Memorial Trust Fund, the Edwards and Steptoe Research Trust Fund, ESHRE, Ferring Pharmaceuticals, Hart Publishing, Merck, the Society for Reproduction and Fertility, Theramex, TMRW Life Sciences and Vitrolife.

If tweeting about the conference, please use the hashtag #PETconf21

Further details of the conference can be found here.