A quarter of women trying for a baby have used a fertility spell and 15 per cent thought it worked, according to a Netmums survey...
A Californian biotechnology company has obtained the first US patent for developing a method to create stem cells from adult cells....
The International Human Epigenome Consortium (IHEC), launched in Paris last week, plans to map 1,000 reference epigenomes within a decade...
A UK fertility centre is to offer the controversial US genetic test that promises to eliminate the chances of a couple having a baby with over 100 inherited diseases....
Researchers have expressed concern about athlete's use of genetic tools in the 'next generation' of illegal doping, and have stressed the importance of developing reliable new detection tests to stop them. Writing in the journal Science, Theodore Friedmann and colleagues at the University of California warn that 'the time is right to look at how advances in genetics are affecting sport'. The authors highlight the dangers of using imperfect and 'highly risky' genetic techniques, which may have...
The UK's Family Planning Association (FPA) has launched a new campaign, entitled 'Conceivable?', to warn women over 35 that age alone is not a reliable contraceptive...
The UK's General Medical Council (GMC) is hearing evidence of a Dutch clinic that supplied stem cell therapies to British patients alleged to be not 'intended for human use'....
A woman having a child at 40 has a 50 per cent greater chance of having a child diagnosed with autism than a woman of 25-29, a study has found...
The UK Gene Therapy Advisory Committee (GTAC) has given ReNeuron, a British biotech company, permission to begin the first ever clinical trial into using embryonic stem cells as a stroke treatment this year...
Boys conceived through IVF tend to have short fingers - a trait linked to infertility, say researchers in a study published in the journal of Reproductive Biomedicine Online...
Scientists have identified a genetic variant that may influence the rate at which a person will age. The finding, published in last week's edition of the journal Nature Genetics, could help identify which individuals are most susceptible to common age-related conditions, such as heart disease and Alzheimer's disease....
The media is filled with coverage of genes and genetics, ranging from new clinical developments to genetic advancements. But few biology textbooks/booklets offer a way of simplifying the topic to pupils. This is one of the advantages of this introductory book...
Stephen Blood died in 1995, following the sudden onset of bacterial meningitis. His widow, just twenty-eight years old, hit the headlines after fighting for the right to use his sperm to conceive their child. Flesh and Blood tells the human story behind the headlines...
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What happens when surrogacy goes wrong: The recent Indiana surrogacy case in wider context
by Louisa Ghevaert
A northern Indiana couple are the latest in a series of people to become embroiled in a legal battle in the US following the birth of a child conceived through surrogacy. They follow in the footsteps of a recent series of high profile and hard fought US legal parentage battles involving surrogate-born babies. As demand for surrogacy grows worldwide and its practice remains largely unregulated, surrogacy continues to raise difficult legal, ethical and emotional questions which a...
Back to the future
by Dr Adam Hedgecoe
The Counsyl 'Universal Genetic Test' has a distinctly 'retro' feel to it. With its focus on Mendelian disorders (i.e. classic genetic diseases like cystic fibrosis), many of the ethical issues raised by this new service are not new themselves, but rather present new challenges...