Correction: HFEA publishes a Grade A Incident report

Last week BioNews reported that the UK's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) had for the first time decided to publish its report and the Licence Committee minutes relating to Grade A incidents, two of which occurred earlier last year at Guy's Hospital Assisted Conception Unit (ACU). It has been brought to our attention that there were a number of inaccuracies in this article. The corrected version of the article is published below:...[Read More]

Will sports fans have 'the balls' for sperm donation?

Sports fans in Manchester, UK, will be asked 'Have you got the balls?' to donate sperm by a National Health Service (NHS) promotional campaign....[Read More]

UK fertility watchdog report on embryo mix-ups due

The UK's fertility industry regulator, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), is poised to report back this week on embryo mix-ups at Guys and St Thomas' Hospital in London. According to The Sun and Independent newspapers, a HFEA licence committee was due to meet today to review the findings of an investigation into what went wrong at the hospital and how to prevent a repeat incident. The hospital came under scrutiny after the embryos of three women were destr...[Read More]

Fertility watchdog to review donation rules

The UK's fertility watchdog - the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) - agreed at an open Authority meeting last week to review a range of its sperm, egg and embryo donation (SEED) policies during 2010....[Read More]

Embryo donation is not like adoption

The recent report by the Ethics Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) (1), stating that the use of the term 'embryo adoption' is misleading, addresses a question which has been asked since the first successful donation of an embryo. Should treatment with donated embryos be approached as any other assisted reproductive technology (ART), or should it be seen as another form of adoption? Children conceived through embryo donation do resemble adopted chi..

A link between male infertility and epigenetic disorders in ART babies?

The aim of assisted reproductive technology (ART) is to achieve a single most important goal, the birth of a healthy child. ART is responsible for the birth of over 200,000 children each year worldwide. In the most common form of infertility treatment - IVF (in vitro fertilisation) - the woman's eggs are collected and then combined with the man's sperm in a petri dish. The successfully fertilised eggs are then transferred into the woman's womb. In ...[Read More]

Children's human rights and assisted human reproduction

A recent article by journalist, Allison Cross, described how a shortage of Canadian donor sperm could be prompting women and their partners to turn to the Internet to find free donors: 'Many of these people want 'do-it-yourself' donor insemination, without intervention by doctors'...[Read More]

Top IVF clinic mistakenly uses genetically abnormal sperm to treat infertile couples

A mistake at one of London's top fertility clinics has resulted in more than 11 women being treated with genetically abnormal sperm, according to an exposé published in the Independent on Sunday newspaper this week. If passed on, the chromosomal abnormality carried by the sperm could have triggered miscarriages or resulted in the birth of a child with serious chromosomal disorder....[Read More]

Lords attack cross-generation embryo and gamete donation

In a debate in the House of Lords of the UK parliament last week, Tory Lord Earl Howe criticised revised regulations that allow for embryos, sperm and eggs to be stored for up to 55 years for prematurely infertile parents. Previous legislation set the maximum storage time at ten years....[Read More]

A new era for the HFEA

When it comes into force on 1 October the new Human Fertilisation and Embryology (HFE) Act will herald the single greatest change to affect the UK fertility sector in nearly two decades, since we - the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) - came into being as the UK regulator....[Read More]

US company offers celebrity ‘look-a-like’ sperm

A California-based fertility company is offering prospective parents a range of celebrity 'look-a-like' sperm donors. Cryobank, which is also planning to offer services in New York, allows customers to search through a database according to characteristics such as ethinicity and eye colour without revealing donors' photographs. In addition, the company has now added features that resemble celebrities such as David Beckham and David Blaine....[Read More]

Is cross-border reproductive care a problem, and for whom?

As a clinician based in the UK, one cannot fail to be aware that some patients seek fertility treatments abroad. Until now we only had newspaper headlines or anecdotal evidence, but having presented the results of the first European study in Amsterdam at the annual ESHRE conference (1), we may now base our reflections on some facts, even if selected by the voluntary nature of participating colleagues and centres abroad....[Read More]

The problem with 21st Century Motherhood

Did the death of Maria Bousada change public attitudes to the modern phenomenon headlined as 'Oldest Mums'? The world's media certainly made hay and the news reverberated for a few days; and it seems likely that the Channel 4 documentary 'the Worlds Oldest Mums' was rescheduled to screen early to catch the media wave which the death generated. The aftermath, though, of this tsunami seems to have largely been relative indifference....[Read More]

HFEA calls for debate around payment for sperm and egg donation

A public debate is urgently needed to decide whether people should be paid for donating eggs and sperm to infertile couples, according to Lisa Jardine, Chairman of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA). In an exclusive interview with the Times, Professor Jardine said that the lack of egg and sperm donors in this country was driving couples abroad for fertility treatment in often unregulated clinics, and that the HFEA could potentially consider a reversal of the ban on paymen...[Read More]