Babies born following fertility treatment are more likely to be premature and to have a lower birth weight than those conceived naturally, according to a group of Dutch and Australian researchers. Their findings, published in the British Medical Journal, indicate that single IVF babies are more likely to face birth...
Accurate prenatal tests for Down syndrome and other chromosome disorders should be made available to all pregnant women, not just those over 35, according to a new US study. Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, evaluated the cost-effectiveness of invasive methods such as amniocentesis, and also surveyed 534...
The state of New South Wales in Australia has also proposed to remove the anonymity of sperm and egg donors, as part of a 'major shake-up' of its legislation on assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs). Following six years of deliberation, the New South Wales health authority has introduced a draft bill...
Public health minister, Melanie Johnson MP, has announced at the annual conference of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) that the UK government's Department of Health is to fully review the country's fertility and embryology legislation. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act was a 'landmark' piece of legislation when...
The Royal Society (the UK's national academy of science) has called for a worldwide ban on what it calls 'cowboy cloners': scientists and groups who say they are carrying out human reproductive cloning. It has also released a set of guidelines, aimed at helping people to decide whether human cloning...
The UK government has announced that people who donate eggs, sperm or embryos in the UK are to lose their right to anonymity. The change to the existing law - which currently does not allow children conceived using donor sperm to discover the identity of donors, but only to find out...
Suzi Leather, chair of the UK's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), has stated in an interview with a national newspaper that the law requiring fertility clinics to consider a child's 'need for a father' before offering treatment is 'nonsense'. It would be better for clinics to assess women seeking...
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Comment
Donor anonymity and rights
by Professor Emily Jackson
The announcement that the government intends to remove anonymity from sperm, egg and embryo donors was framed in terms of rights: the child's right to information about her genetic origins should, it was argued, take priority over the donor's right to privacy. This appeal to rights is unsurprising. The UN...