India draws up bioethics guidelines

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has published its first guidelines on biomedical research on human patients, reports the Lancet. They outlaw research on human cloning, germ-line gene therapy (genetic manipulation of egg, sperm or embryo cells) and xenotransplantation (animal to human organ transplants).

The guidelines were issued following two years of debate, and deal extensively with assisted reproductive technologies. On surrogate motherhood, they state that the woman who gives birth to the child will be the mother. But the sperm donor should have a preferential right to adopt the child six weeks after the birth, with the mother's consent.

M N Venkatachaliah, chairman of the ICRM panel, has suggested a legal framework to install the guidelines. They will be implemented by institutional ethics committees, although according to Vasantha Muthuswamy, the ICRM's deputy director, very few institutes currently have such teams.