Fletchers conceive 'saviour sibling'
A UK woman is reported to be pregnant following an attempt to conceive a 'saviour sibling' to treat her seriously ill two-year old son. In September 2004, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) granted Joe and Julie Fletcher permission to have a tissue-matched baby to help treat Joshua, who...
Comment
A national bioethics committee - lessons from France
by Professor Donna Dickenson
While some UK commentators debate setting up a national bioethics committee to supplement or rival the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), France is doing the reverse: creating a new statutory national biomedicine regulatory authority, in addition to its 20-year old national ethics committee. After January 2005, the CCNE...
Why the UK doesn't need a national bioethics committee
by Professor Richard Ashcroft
In a recent guest commentary for BioNews, Josephine Quintavalle of Comment on Reproductive Ethics (Core) presented the case for establishing a national bioethics committee for the UK. She rightly noted that many countries have established such a committee, and that many of these committees have a distinguished record in producing...
Prolifers and the status of the embryo - Why the change of heart?
by Teena Chowdhury
The ProLife Alliance has sought to challenge the legality of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA)'s decision to grant a cloning licence to the Newcastle Human Embryonic Stem Cell Group. In a statement, the Alliance said that: 'It has been erroneously reported that the licence will further research...