A second UK clinic is offering boys suffering from cancer the chance to have their glandular material frozen in the hope that it will later help then to father their own children. The procedure is already available at the CARE clinic in Nottingham. Dr Simon Fischel, the director, said they had already stored material from four or five boys. He added that 'it is a novel idea and we need to find the science, the medicine and the regulation.' A second clinic, at University Hospital in Nottingham, is to offer the new service. Following experimental testicular transplants in the US, doctors hope that grafting the material back on to the testes after chemotherapy will result in the production of mature, healthy sperm.
However, the service has provoked some regulatory concern as it is not covered by current regulations. A spokesman for the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) which licenses fertility treatments in the UK said: 'We license the storage of gametes, which means mature eggs and sperm that are capable of fertilisation.' 'Before puberty they are not mature enough to fertilise, so we are not required to license their storage.' But the HFEA is currently in talks with the the Department of Health and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists over the issue of material taken from the testes and ovaries of children. Clinicians have been urging the government to regulate this area.
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