Dr Gabrielle Samuel was previously a Volunteer Writer at BioNews, and is a researcher working on a (second) PhD at Brunel University's Sociology and Communications Department. Her research, conducted under the auspices of a Society and Ethics Strategic Award from the Wellcome Trust, concerns the policy and legal implications of severe brain injuries. She was formerly Genetics Editor at BioNews and at the charity that publishes it, the Progress Educational Trust (PET). She originally studied Biochemistry at the University of Birmingham, and went on to obtain a PhD in Molecular Genetics at the University of Adelaide. She then worked at the University of Sydney's Centre for Values, Ethics and the Law in Medicine, initially under the auspices of a scholarship from the Australian Bone Marrow Donor Registry, then in research and postdoctoral posts awarded by the Australian Government's National Health and Medical Research Council. She has also been a Visiting Research Fellow at King's College London's Centre for Biomedicine and Society.
Researchers have transformed embryonic stem cells from a diabetic woman into insulin-producing beta cells, a study in Nature reports...
Researchers in China have developed a new non-invasive method for detecting genetic defects in IVF embryos that could improve the chances of successful IVF for some patients...
This event was designed to promote debate about how and when fertility research should be reported in the media, and to ask the question 'where does the responsibility lie to ensure that such reporting is not hyped?' And that it did...
Women who undergo fertility treatment using cryopreserved embryos may have healthier babies and fewer complications than those who use 'fresh' embryos, a study suggests....
Single embryo transfer reduces the risk of death within a month of birth for babies conceived via IVF, according to an Australian study...
Can you identify yourself? How? By your name, sex, religion, by what you do, or the relationships you form? These are the types of unenviable and arguably unanswerable questions the Wellcome Trust asks in its current Exhibition 8 Rooms, 9 Lives. The exhibition does not set out to answer questions about identity (and with good reason). However, wandering through the myriad of rooms the exhibition displays, through a series of individual life stories, brings to life at least some of the
Extraordinary Measures is the story of the desperation of a father to find a drug to prolong the lives of his sick children, Megan and Patrick, who both have an incurable genetic condition with a life expectancy of nine years of age....
'IVF doctors to raffle human egg' ran the Sunday Times headline on 14 March 2010. A seminar sponsored by an American clinic took place in London at which a human egg and a cycle of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment was awarded to one couple who attended...
This small session, convened in the Wellcome Trust's Library last Wednesday, was the tale of two Francis's. The discussion highlighted the lives of, and drew on the similarities between, Francis Galton - who coined the term eugenics - and Francis Crick - who determined the structure of DNA with James Watson...
From watching the trailers for Splice, I thought the film centred on a genetic engineering experiment gone awry - mutants taking over the world and so on. Sadly not. At least if it had, it would be based on a storyline which - although tiresome - is proven to work. Not only that, but this horror of a horror film was far from scary...
BioNews, published by the Progress Educational Trust (PET), provides news and comment on genetics, assisted conception, embryo/stem cell research and related areas.
