Gene therapy trials for haemophilia, muscular dystrophy and childhood blindness are to receive £3 million funding, the UK Department of Health has announced. A further £1 million has been set aside for research into the long-term safety of some gene therapy techniques. The funding is part of a £50 million...
A British woman accused of deceiving two couples into giving her money for her services as a surrogate has pleaded guilty to the charges against her. Moira Greenslade was charged on three counts of obtaining money by deception and three offences under the Adoption Act. The charges stem from the...
The University of Minnesota, US, has applied to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for permission to begin clinical stem cell trials in humans. If the FDA approves the trials, the University would become the first public research institute in the country to begin work looking at the therapeutic use...
Two new studies have cast further doubt on the ability of blood stem cells to turn into heart cells, even though several clinical trials based on this promising new treatment are currently underway. Researchers at Stanford University, California, and the University of Washington in Seattle have failed to duplicate the...
Natallie Evans, one of two British women who was legally prevented from using embryos kept in frozen storage by the withdrawal of consent by her ex-partner, has started her appeal. In the latest stage of her continued fight to have her own biologically-related child, she is asking the UK's Court...
The ethics committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) says that parents who use fertility treatment with donor sperm or eggs should be 'encouraged' to tell their children how they were created. The ethics committee does not say that telling children should be compulsory, stating instead that parents...
A Swedish research team has been granted 240,000 dollars by the US Department of Defense to undertake embryonic stem (ES) cell research for Parkinson's disease. The money has been pledged to Lund University in Sweden by the Pentagon despite limits currently in place in the US on this type of...
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Egg sharing: a vehicle for compulsory counselling?
by Professor Eric Blyth
Egg sharing, a scheme in which women undergoing IVF donate half their eggs in exchange for reduced-price treatment, has been practised in the UK for some years, but not without controversy. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority's (HFEA's) decision in 1998 to 'regulate not ban' egg sharing was itself a...