Whenever embryo screening is discussed in the media, there is always talk of slippery slopes and designer babies. And the most recent occasion should not disappoint. When Professor Joy Delhanty of University College London announced her plans to offer embryo screening - or preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) - for a range of...
This week's BioNews reports on the continuing controversy surrounding the practice known as egg sharing. In a letter to all licensed IVF clinics in the United Kingdom, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) distanced itself from egg sharing and ordered clinics to remove from their literature any reference to...
The insurance industry is in trouble again. In the field of genetics, in particular, insurers have traditionally had a reputation for putting financial gain before ethics. This week's news that insurers are using information from different genetic tests in insurance policies has been regarded by many as no great surprise...
This week's BioNews includes news from the UK that the government is planning to put an end to sperm and egg donor anonymity. The news has been greeted with a considerable amount of concern, particularly from infertility clinics and patients worried that a change in the law will mean a...
Should modern technologies be used by women who seek to conceive a child after the death of their partners? One wonders why we are witnessing all this hand-wringing, particularly since nothing has actually happened in this area. The Independent thought the issue so important that it ran a leader, as...
This week's BioNews includes news from the United States that a New York fertility clinic has started an 'embryo adoption' scheme. The scheme has sparked controversy because the embryos available for donation are catalogued according to the physical and intellectual attributes of their genetic parents. Another apparent eyebrow-raiser is that...
The European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) held their annual meeting in Tours last week. The European Society of Human Genetics (ESHG) held theirs in Geneva at the end of May...
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...
It's only a matter of time before the first human is cloned. Or so we are told. This week's news that two teams in America are competing to produce the first cloned embryo for the development of new therapies, brought with it the familiar cries that cloned babies are just...
This week's BioNews includes news that three British hospitals will begin offering the option of ovarian tissue freezing to women or girls undergoing chemotherapy treatment. Because chemotherapy almost always destroys fertility, the ovarian tissue is harvested before treatment in the hope that when it is grafted back on at a...
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