Human geneticists in Japan will soon be required to obtain informed consent from anyone providing them with a DNA sample, under draft guidelines released by the Ministry of Health and Welfare last week. The new ethics rules will apply to all research funded by the ministry, including a large study...
Tony Blair believes that GM foods and crops have the potential for harm, as well as for good. In an article for the Independent on Sunday yesterday, the Prime Minister said the jury was still out on the new food technology and that there was cause for legitimate public concern...
Infertility expert Simon Fishel has lost his legal battle with Nottingham University to keep £400,000 he made from working in embryology clinics abroad. The High Court found Dr Fishel liable for making a profit from treatment he carried out using university embryologists. He was also found liable for breach of...
Gemini Holdings, the company that launched a genetic database project in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada this month, is to be floated on the stock market. The Nasdaq flotation is likely to value the company at more than $200 million. Meanwhile, the value of PPL Therapeutics' shares rose this week, following...
A spate of legal challenges by those previously denied fertility treatment in the UK may follow the introduction of new human rights legislation this autumn, says Ruth Deech, chairwoman of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA). The new act, which comes into effect from October, incorporates the European Convention...
The Cambridge-based biotech company Gemini Holdings has announced plans for a genetic database in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. The project, to be called Newfound Genetics, is a joint venture between Gemini and a consortium called Lineage Biomedical, set up by Newfoundland doctors. It hopes to recruit families...
Texas-based company, Genetics Savings and Clone, is offering bereaved animal-lovers the chance to 'reincarnate' their dead pets. For a mere $2,500, the firm will take cells from a dead or dying animal and store them until they can be cloned. 'It's a major scientific challenge, but the team is 90...
US scientists have created the first mouse model of Down syndrome (DS), a condition that affects one in 700 human babies. People with DS have an extra copy of human chromosome 21, and the mice have three copies of the corresponding mouse chromosome regions. The researchers, speaking at the American...
The London Gynaecology and Fertility Centre, run by infertility specialist Ian Craft, settled a unique High Court claim last week over the unauthorised use of frozen sperm. Austrian businessman Michael von Schonberg sued the clinic after learning that his former girlfriend had given birth to a daughter, after using his...
PPL Therapeutics, the biotech firm that cloned Dolly the sheep, is close to producing the world's first cloned pigs, according to a report in the Sunday Telegraph. A surrogate sow is due to give birth to three piglets in April, PPL scientists revealed at a biotech conference last week. But...
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