Research into the use of early embryo cells to develop new disease treatments looks set to go ahead in the UK, following a free vote held in the House of Commons on 19 December. British MPs voted in favour of the proposed changes to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act...
The UK's Department of Health is to review the legislation covering the information available to people conceived through egg, sperm or embryo donation. Currently, such children born after the 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act will be able to enquire if they were conceived through embryo or gamete donation once...
The large-scale decoding of genetic information was the most important scientific advance of the year 'perhaps even the century', according to the journal Science. And its UK counterpart Nature asked 'Where were you on 26 June 2000, while history was being made?' Reviews in the popular press agreed that the...
Doctors in Singapore have announced the birth of the world's first babies conceived using both frozen eggs and sperm. Dr Cheng Li Chang of the Thomson Medical Center said the birth of the healthy twins followed in vitro fertilisation (IVF) using eggs and sperm from a couple who had medical...
US and Japanese scientists are launching a new study into the long-term effects of radiation on the genes of children born to atom bomb survivors in Japan. The research will focus on diseases with a genetic component that do not usually show up until adulthood, such as diabetes and heart...
Pharmaceutical giants Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham finally completed their £114 billion merger at the end of last year, becoming GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) on 27 December. The deal, which took 11 months to complete, means that GSK is now the world's largest drugs company and the third biggest corporation in the...
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What rights do people born of donor conception have?
by Juliet Tizzard
During the Christmas break, the UK Department of Health announced its intention to hold a public consultation on egg and sperm donor anonymity. Sometime in the future, the law protecting donor's identities may be changed. However, reading some of the newspapers, you could be forgiven for thinking that the law...