Leading figures in genetics and fertility recognised in Queen's Birthday Honours

Several leading figures involved in the science, medicine and regulation of genetics and fertility have received awards in the Queen's Birthday Honours List. Foremost among them is Professor Sir John Sulston, who has been made a Companion of Honour. Professor Sulston's pioneering work on the development and genetics of nematode worms earned him a Nobel Prize and he went on to play a central role in the Human Genome Project, leading the UK's participation and founding the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.

GBEs were awarded to Professor Sir David Weatherall and Professor Sir Michael Rawlins. Professor Weatherall is a haematologist and genetics researcher who established the UK's first Institute of Molecular Medicine (at the University of Oxford), and who has played a leading role in the World Health Organisation's work on genomics. Professor Rawlins is a physician and pharmacologist who was the founding chair of the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (now the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence - NICE), and who currently chairs both UK Biobank and the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency.

A CBE was awarded to Sally Cheshire, who chairs the UK's fertility regulator - the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) - and who is also chair of Health Education England (North). An OBE was awarded to Emily Jackson, Professor of Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science, who was previously Deputy Chair of the HFEA and who has served in many other biomedical and public bodies and their ethics committees.

OBEs were also awarded to Professor Graeme Black (strategic director of the Manchester Centre for Genomic Medicine), Professor Erica Haimes (founding executive director of the Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences Research Centre at Newcastle University) and Jacquie Westwood (director of the UK Genetic Testing Network). An MBE was awarded to Dr Rachel Butler (head of the All Wales Genetic Laboratory).