The UK's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has given permission to an IVF clinic to use pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) in order to select an embryo free from disease, and that will be a genetic match for an already existing child. Although such a procedure has already occurred in...
A High Court judge in the UK has ruled that twins born to a woman who was acting as a surrogate for an American couple can stay in the UK. The woman, who has not been named, has no biological connection to the children, but has won the first stage...
Christopher Reeve, the actor who played Superman, has been actively endorsing embryo stem cell research. Last week, he attended a conference in the US where he said he strongly supported legislation banning human reproductive cloning but permitting therapeutic cloning and embryo stem cell research. Reeve, who was paralysed by a...
An international team of scientists, led by Professor Sir Paul Nurse, the British researcher who was co-winner of a Nobel prize last year, has announced that it has decoded the genome of a type of yeast. The study is reported in the science journal Nature and is likely to have...
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No demand for designer babies, just healthy children
by Dr Jess Buxton
A 'designer baby' hit the headlines in the UK last week, even though the child in question has not yet been conceived, let alone born. It's future brother, three-year old Zain Hashmi has a rare blood disorder, thalassaemia, which can only be cured with a bone marrow transplant from a...