Author of Bioscience, Governance and Politics
Dr John Gillott is a Volunteer Writer at BioNews. His PhD research was conducted at Innogen and focused on the changing governance of science, which he explored through a study of human embryo and human tissue research in the UK. He also has a degree in mathematics, and he previously worked as a Policy Officer at Genetic Alliance UK. He is author of Bioscience, Governance and Politics, and coauthor of Science and the Retreat from Reason. He tweets as @gillott_john
Today's 'Show of Support' for the UK HFE Bill, now before the Commons, to put forward the message to MPs that it is 'vitally important that the legislation is not watered down', raised questions and debate about whether scientists are protesting, lobbying or explaining around the issue (1). But what...
The UK Draft Human Tissue and Embryos Bill, published recently, explicitly covers a number of uses of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). In this commentary I concentrate on just one - PGD to avoid diseases or disorders with a genetic component. The Draft Bill proposes that a licence can only be granted...
The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee's report, 'Government Proposals for the Regulation of Hybrid and Chimera Embryos', is its response to two related events: firstly the UK Government's intention to outlaw the creation of such entities, announced in December 2006 in its White Paper (1), and secondly the...
Human rights, privacy and medical research', a new report published by the Genetic Interest Group, traces the impact that the right to privacy is having on the regulation of medical research and clinical practice, with a particular focus on implications for human genetics. Less than 15 years ago, English law...
Baroness Kennedy, launching the Human Genetics Commission (HGC)'s new report, Making Babies: reproductive decisions and genetic technologies, said: 'Science, harnessed by society to prevent real suffering, is a social good. However, a culture which does not acknowledge that all humanity has a value, and that each one of us...
Back in April 2001, Alan Milburn, the then Secretary of State for Health, announced that the Government would publish a Green Paper on genetics in 2002, drawing together advances in the field, mapping out the steps needed to prepare the NHS 'so it can harness the benefits of these future...
Anniversaries are arbitrary things, but on this 50 anniversary of the discovery of the structure of DNA by Watson and Crick, we have, by design as much as coincidence, something else to celebrate: 'The completion of a high-quality, comprehensive sequence of the human genome... The genomic era is now a...
The decision by the Genetics and Insurance Committee (GAIC) last week to approve the use of genetic test results for Huntington's disease in assessing life insurance applications re-ignited a public debate about the dark side of advances in genetic science. According to the Daily Mail, Britain now leads the world...
Press coverage of a report recently published by the Advisory Committee on Genetic Testing on the subject of Prenatal Genetic Testing suggests that a radically new service is being proposed, involving the 'mass genetic testing of pregnant women' with the attendant risk of a slippery slope towards the creation of...
It was against the background of increasing excitement about the therapeutic potential of stem-cell and cloning technologies that the UK Government's Human Genetics Advisory Commission and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority issued a joint report last December. They strongly recommended that the Government give the go-ahead for research using...
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