HFEA under fire for involvement in 'trial by TV''

The UK's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has been heavily criticised for 'playing to the cameras' and jeopardising the fair trial of fertility expert, Mohamed Taranissi. The authority sent investigative teams, accompanied by police, to two fertility clinics owned by the doctor at the same time the BBC aired its Panorama programme, in which it claimed an undercover reporter was offered unnecessary and unproven fertility treatment by one of the clinics under investigation. The incident shown in the documentary occurred at the Assisted Reproduction and Gynaecology Centre. The other centre under investigation by the HFEA, the Reproductive Genetics Institute, has been accused of continuing to conduct fertility treatments without a license. Mr Taranissi's lawyers deny this allegation.

The HFEA called a news conference just hours before the documentary was aired, where Angela McNabb, chief executive of the HFEA, announced, 'As we speak two inspection teams from the HFEA have gone simultaneously into these two clinics with police officers in attendance to carry out an unannounced inspection'. The statement has been attacked for being overly dramatic and the HFEA has been accused of timing the raids to coincide with the airing of the BBC documentary to generate increased media attention. The HFEA, which covers both the licensing and policing aspects of assisted reproduction in the UK, has been criticised in the past for failing to properly inspect fertility clinics.

Mark Hamilton, Chair of the British Fertility Society (BFS), came down heavily on the HFEA in a letter to The Times last Friday, outlining the concern of the BFS over professionals being unfairly judged in the media spotlight. 'If the regulator has concerns about the practice of a particular clinic then its investigation should be conducted without the glare of the media, where potentially misleading and misinformed conclusions could be reached', Mr Hamilton said. 'It would have been wise for the HFEA to have dissociated itself from the Panorama programme and conducted its own inquiries in isolation', he added. A spokesman for the BFS has said that its members have spoken out in outrage against the decision of the HFEA to investigate Mr Taranissi's clinics simultaneously with the airing of the programme. Dr Allan Pacey, secretary of the BFS previously said, 'The BFS does not advocate trial by television'. And speaking on BBC Radio 4, Dr Evan Harris MP, who is a member of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, said that he thought it 'extremely unusual for an investigator, a regulator, to be seen to be cooperating with journalists in terms of releasing information about one of the people they are regulating'.

Mr Taranissi is said to be worth over £35 million and has been widely regarded as a fertility hero by the hundreds of couples he has helped to successfully conceive. It is reported that his clinics have produced around 2,300 babies in the past seven years. The HFEA has said that it took regulatory action after it had been contacted by a whistleblower and robustly denies any allegations of collusion with the BBC over the timing of the raids. 'We have had concerns about the clinics for some time, quite separate to any media investigation and we have been pursuing a normal process with regards those concerns', said Angela McNabb, adding, 'We are a public body and it is absolutely right and proper we should work in a transparent way'.

Supporters of the fertility doctor have started a web-petition against the 'one-sided media persecution of Mr. Taranissi'.