UK's first frozen egg baby
The UK's first IVF baby conceived using a thawed, frozen egg was born recently, reported the Daily Mail last week...
News
Setback for Parkinson's disease research
The first full trial of a new technique to treat Parkinson's disease using transplanted fetal brain cells has produced disappointing results, with serious side effects occurring in some patients. The study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Parkinson's disease is caused by a gradual loss of dopamine-producing...
Patients challenge animal rights protestors
A patient support group is challenging animal rights activists to refuse any medical treatment developed using results from research carried out on animals. Seriously Ill for Medical Research (SIMR) says that those who oppose such experiments should also refuse the cures, reported the Times newspaper last week. Andrew Blake, founder...
Gene therapy for stomach cancer?
A team of US researchers has developed an oral gene therapy treatment that appears to prevent and cure stomach tumours in laboratory mice. The study, carried out by scientists at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers carried out...
Success in the stars?
The University of Southampton has invited 50 women who are having or who have had infertility treatment to take part in an astrological research study. They will be asked to provide the researchers with near accurate times and dates of events in their treatment, to see whether the success of...
Selected biotech news
Some research projects have had to be stopped and others have been set back by months by the discovery of a flaw in a 'gene chip' known as GeneChip Murine Genome U74 Set, made by Affymetrix, California. The chip contains thousands of known sequences of DNA which act as probes...
Comment
Medical research and the media
by Juliet Tizzard
Doctors and scientists in most medical research must be continually miffed at the amount of press coverage their colleagues in other disciplines routinely receive. Some areas of research are newsworthy and others simply are not. But the ingredients that make particular studies attractive to journalists are not necessarily purpose or...