This week's BioNews reports on news that the American biotech company which funded last year's stem cell breakthrough has bought the commercial arm of the Roslin Institute. With the new acquisition, the Geron Corporation will now be able to marry the nuclear transfer technology developed at Roslin with the American...
This week's BioNews includes news from the United States of the first children born as a result of IVF and preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) for sickle cell disease. Because of PGD, the couple concerned was able to start a pregnancy knowing that it was free of the genetic fault which...
The media have gone millennium baby mad. In Britain and around the world, newspapers, radio stations and television networks have been falling over themselves to make the most of the chance to conceive the first child of the millennium. The UK's ITV television channel offered us Birth Race 2000, a...
It's official: there is no such thing as a gene for homosexuality. Well, sort of. A number of articles in last week's press reported on new research from the University of Western Ontario that failed to demonstrate a link between a gene on the X chromosome and homosexuality in men...
This week's BioNews includes news from France that nuclear transfer technology may cause long-term health problems in the resulting clones. A team of scientists led by Jean-Paul Renard reported in the Lancet that a cloned calf, born after nuclear transfer from an adult skin cell, died of sudden anaemia seven...
This week's BioNews includes the story of a New York woman, Donna Fasano, who was implanted not only with her own embryos, but also those of another woman. The result was a twin pregnancy - one twin being the genetic child of Mrs Fasano and the other child being the genetic...
Another National Science Week has brought with it the familiar hand-wringing about how little the public understands about science. And yet, science is more talked about and reported than ever before. The mere fact that a discussion about the level of public understanding of science is taking place in the...
The annual conference of the Progress Educational Trust - 'Is the embryo sacrosanct? Multi-faith perspectives' - took place in November 2008. The third and final session of the day - titled 'Gamete Donation and Doctrine' - is reported here. The session was chaired by Rabbi Jonathan Romain, Chair of the Assembly of Reform Rabbis...
