The new US government has not yet reached a decision on the funding of research that involves embryo stem cells - early embryo cells capable of developing into any type of body tissue. US Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tommy Thompson, said last week that National Institutes of Health (NIH...
The UK couple who wanted to use an embryo sex screening technique to have a daughter revealed last week that they travelled to Italy to undergo the procedure, but it did not result in any female embryos. Alan and Louise Masterton went abroad for their treatment last July because IVF...
A team of Italian and US fertility experts vowed last week to go ahead with plans to begin human cloning trials, despite widespread condemnation from scientists, ethicists and religious leaders worldwide. Italian doctor Severino Antinori told a conference in Rome last Friday that he had 600 patients from Italy, America...
A new study by a team of UK and US researchers suggests that the ability to recognise musical notes is more influenced by genes than by non-genetic factors. Scientists at the National Institute on Deafness, Maryland and St Thomas's Hospital, London studied the ability of twins to recognise wrong notes...
The Indian government has set aside £13.3m for medical genomics research over the next five years, reports last week's British Medical Journal (BMJ). But the announcement has provoked controversy, coming in the wake of recent budget cuts to India's malaria and leprosy control programmes. Professor K Vijay Raghavan, of the...
Comment
Reproductive cloning isn't safe
by Juliet Tizzard
The science news over the weekend has been dominated by one story. In a shambolic conference in Rome last Friday, Severino Antinori and his colleague Panayiotis Zavos told scientists and journalists of their intention to offer cloning to infertile couples some time in the next two years. Few medical and...