Babies born as a result of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) are more at risk of complications, although this is not attributable to the technology itself, according to a Swedish study published in the Lancet last week. The increased risk of complications in IVF babies is due to the 25 times...
The advisory committee that monitors human gene therapy experiments for the US government plans to tighten its guidelines early next month on the reporting of deaths and adverse outcomes of gene therapy trials. The move by the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee (RAC) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) follows...
This has not been a good year for life-scientists. Anti-GM activists dressed as genetically engineered monsters took part in Halloween celebrations in New York and Washington D.C. to protest against what they call 'Frankenscience'. The Campaign for Responsible Transplantation were out in force on the streets of New York's Greenwich...
A number of major European life-science research centres are facing financial crisis in the wake of the European Commission's decision not to fund operational costs out of the fifth five-year Framework programme (FP5). The European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) in Cambridge is one facility that is threatened. Under instruction from member...
Japan is to set up the country's first ethical guidelines for the management and use of human genetic information in biomedical research. An ad hoc working group has been established to look into any ethical issues - such as consent and protection of genetic data - that might arise in research using...
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Multiple births may not have a simple solution
by Juliet Tizzard
This week's BioNews includes news of research from Sweden which shows a higher rate of complications in the births and subsequent development of children born as a result of in vitro fertilisation. The authors of the research paper state that this is caused not by IVF itself, but by the...