There was a new development in the ongoing debate over whether the US government should fund human embryonic stem cell research. Under pressure from the Catholic Church, the American Cancer Society (ACS) has withdrawn from a coalition that is lobbying Congress to allow federal funding of such research. The ACS...
The Family Planning Association (FPA) has launched a campaign to raise awareness of chlamydia, regarded as the most common sexually transmitted infection in the UK. Chlamydia can cause pelvic inflammatory disease and infertility in women and is likely to cause fertility problems in men. Graffiti-style stickers with slogans such as...
Despite a chastening year, British Biotech's directors paid themselves a total of £350,000 in bonuses. The former £2 billion flagship of the biotechnology industry saw its value fall to £100 million as a long-running controversy revealed that its drugs did not stand up to the company's initial claims and that...
Scientists at Celera Genomics (USA) announced last week that the Drosophila melanogaster genome seems 'significantly larger' than previous estimates. They suggest that this may be the case with the current estimate of 3 billion base pairs for the human genome which may have to be readjusted to as many as...
A study has found that men who carry a faulty version of a breast cancer gene are four to five times more likely to get prostate cancer. Carriers of the faulty BRCA2 gene, of either sex, also seem to be vulnerable to malignant melanoma and cancers of the pancreas, gall...
Fertility clinics have been issued a warning on egg sharing by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) - the statutory body that licenses fertility clinics in the UK. Egg sharing schemes involve a woman receiving free or discounted in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment in return for donating some of her...
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The HFEA should stick to its guns on egg sharing
by Juliet Tizzard
This week's BioNews reports on the continuing controversy surrounding the practice known as egg sharing. In a letter to all licensed IVF clinics in the United Kingdom, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) distanced itself from egg sharing and ordered clinics to remove from their literature any reference to...