Dr Megan Allyse was previously a Volunteer Writer at BioNews and a Volunteer at the charity that publishes it, the Progress Educational Trust (PET). She is Assistant Professor of Biomedical Ethics at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Previously, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Integration of Research on Genetics and Ethics at Stanford University's School of Medicine and a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Law and Society at the University of California at Berkeley's School of Law. She has carried out field research in China, Hong Kong, Japan, the UK and the USA. She originally studied International Relations and Communication at Stanford University, and went on to obtain her Wellcome Trust supported PhD from the University of Nottingham's Institute for Science and Society. She has contributed a chapter to Communicating Biological Sciences: Ethical and Metaphorical Dimensions (buy this book from Amazon UK), and she is coauthor of a chapter in Advances In Tissue Engineering (buy this book from Amazon UK).
Assisted reproduction returned to the international spotlight last month, when Singapore's highest court penalised a fertility centre that had mistakenly fertilised a woman's eggs with the wrong sperm. The woman and her husband sued for compensation equal
Since its introduction in 2011, the availability of non-invasive prenatal testing has been expanding globally and rapidly. The clinical introduction of NIPT has clear benefits for pregnant women, such as reducing the need for invasive testing. But, depending on local circumstances, it also raises varying challenges and opportunities...
When US based, direct-to-consumer genetic testing company 23andMe announced last month that it had obtained a patent on a method for determining predisposition to Parkinson's disease, it highlighted, perhaps inadvertently, a growing area of unresolved tension between clinical, commercial and research interests....
Have you ever played the children's game Red Light/Green Light? Someone yells 'green light!' and everyone runs as fast as they can (some in circles, but that's not against the rules). When they yell 'red light!', everyone freezes in some contorted position. Playing Red Light/Green Light seems not unlike the experience of conducting embryonic stem cell research in the United States...
The University of California at Berkeley has recently received a great deal of attention for its revised curriculum for incoming first years which will offer students the opportunity to have a DNA sample analyzed for genetic variants...
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has recently consulted on its 8th Code of Practice, which covered the implementation of the new Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 and thus included the classification of 'serious' genetic conditions for which embryo testing should be licensed; however, HFEA approval of individual...
Researchers in Italy and Israel have announced that they have successfully used gene therapy to treat ten children who suffer from a rare form of severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) called ADA-SCID. The trial marks one of the first successful uses of gene therapy since past trials of...
Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, US, have successfully created a human model for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) by using the induced pluripotency technique (iPS cells) to grow large numbers of affected nerve cells which can be studied in the laboratory. Researchers can now observe the process...
UK-based research into deriving disease-specific stem-cell lines from human admixed embryos has been given leave to continue after a judge denied a request for judicial review of a decision by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority to license the project. In January of 2008, the HFEA issued...
Two independent pressure groups are claiming that licenses allowing research into the creation of human admixed embryos are unlawful and that research should be halted immediately. A UK High Court judge heard arguments in London last Wednesday on whether or not to initiate judicial review of the...
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