The Sunday Times draws attention today, Mother’s Day (March 14), to a co-operative initiative between a US and a UK fertility clinic focusing on the marketing of human eggs to UK infertility patients. There will be a seminar in London this week and one of the attendees will be ‘awarded a free single donor egg […] Read more
The Sunday Times draws attention today, Mother’s Day (March 14), to a co-operative initiative between a US and a UK fertility clinic focusing on the marketing of human eggs to UK infertility patients. There will be a seminar in London this week and one of the attendees will be ‘awarded a free single donor egg […] Read more
No surprises from the HFEA in today’s decision to permit exclusion and non-disclosure testing, and to deregulate later onset, lower penetrance conditions. The relevant regulations governing pre-implantation genetic diagnosis become yet more permissive. As CORE correctly anticipated last week, the Authority has re-stated its official position that discarding healthy embryos is entirely permissible if it […] Read more
Articles appeared today in ‘Nature’ and ‘Cell Stem Cell’ reporting the creation of generations of mice using reprogrammed skin tissue from adult mice by two different teams of Chinese researchers (*). There were abnormalities in the first generation of offspring but these seem to have disappeared in subsequent generations. The novelty of this process, which […] Read more
I spent 45 minutes on a radio programme last night, invited allegedly to discuss the decision of US President Obama to allow federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research. Instead I sat with a wry smile, as male after male listener rang in to the programme ranting about the absurdity of defending the rights […] Read more
The UK media is reporting a stem cell breakthrough that could end the ethical battle over the use of human embryos. 1. Some facts The most recent breakthrough in the stem cell technology relates to induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells)*, cells which are embryonic-type but do not require the destruction of human embryos. This […] Read more
Frozen mice and men … The recent news that scientists have been able to clone mice using brain tissue frozen 16 years ago, produced a ‘Daily Mail’ front page, entitled ‘Cloning from the Grave’. (www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1082776/Cloning-grave-Scientists-create-new-life-mouse-frozen-16-YEARS.html) The day was spent deliberating whether we could recreate woolly mammoths and other extinct animals, and accusing those who worried […] Read more
Gordon Brown’s suicide mission as he distances himself from public opinion 1. Brown on stem cells Given all the other problems he has to face in his precarious leadership of the Labour Party one can almost understand why Gordon Brown hasn’t got his head around the science of stem cells and has simply swallowed the […] Read more
New poll – Gordon Brown risks further unpopularity by pressing ahead with controversial Bill A new ComRes poll commissioned on behalf of CORE (Comment on Reproductive Ethics) released today shows that almost eight in ten people (77%) believe that the Government risks making itself more unpopular if it forces the controversial Human Fertilisation and Embryology […] Read more
Comment on Reproductive Ethics (CORE), together with the Christian Legal Centre (CLC), is challenging the legality of the two licences awarded by the HFEA for the creation of animal-human hybrids. We have filed for judicial review. ‘From day one of the proposals to create animal-human cloned embryos, CORE has always argued that they are prohibited […] Read more
