Almost a year after the launch of a public consultation on sex selection, the UK's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has announced its recommendations to Government, which include a continuation of the current ban on sex selection for non-medical reasons. The consultation document asked whether people in the UK...
The UK's Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridgeshire revealed that it had decoded its two billionth chemical 'letter' of DNA last week. The researchers say that if two billion DNA letters (base-pairs) were scaled up to the size of a spiral staircase, they would stretch to the Moon. Almost half...
Two votes that will affect funding and support for embryo stem cell research took place in the European Parliament last week. The Environment Committee voted against proposals that sought to ban embryo stem cell research in the European Union (EU) member states, while the Industry Committee voted in favour of...
Research published last week shows that women who take part in egg sharing programmes when they undergo fertility treatment do not compromise their own chance of having a baby. When a woman agrees to egg sharing, half of the eggs collected in one of her cycles are donated to another...
Scientists at the Icelandic firm deCODE have identified several genetic variations that could play a key role in osteoporosis. People who inherit an altered version of the BMP2 gene are more likely to develop the bone-weakening disease, the team report in the journal PLoS Biology. They stress that several other...
The General Assembly of the United Nations (UN) has narrowly voted to postpone any decision on a global human cloning ban until 2005. Eighty countries voted in favour of the delay, with 79 voting against and 15 abstaining. This meant that delegates did not vote on two other competing cloning...
Your appetite may be influenced by your genetic make-up, according to a new study by a group of UK, US and French researchers. People who inherit an altered version of the GAD2 gene are more likely to give in to hunger and overeat, say the team, who published their findings...
Stay up-to-date on all the latest developments in the fields of human fertility and genomics. And be the first to hear about upcoming events and other announcements.
Comment
Should we have new laws to stop sex selection?
by Juliet Tizzard
Today the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority has launched the outcome of a year-long enquiry into sex selection. The main recommendation of the HFEA's report, 'Sex selection: options for regulation', is that the existing ban on sex selection for social reasons be upheld. Given that the HFEA already regulates the...