Don't overstate the risks of drinking while pregnant

It is no surprise that the recently published research into the epigenetic effects of alcohol consumption during pregnancy has received considerable media attention. Practically all pregnant women will worry - understandably - about the health of their future children, and will quickly seize on information or reassurance from credible-seeming sources - a fact well recognised by our commercially-motivated press...[Read More]

Choosing children: Reflections on the regulation of embryo testing

My remit for this piece starts with a request to 'reflect on the past nine years and beyond'. Coincidentally, it was about nine years ago that I made my own first tentative foray into publishing in the area of reproductive law and ethics, and it is a sobering thing to...[Read More]

Embryo testing: Why drawing lines risks devaluing the disabled

It isn't uncommon, at international conferences, to hear praise for the UK's approach to regulating reproductive and genetic technologies. The cautious, incremental approach of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) is often contrasted - favourably - with, for example, the rather dramatic oscillation between regulatory extremes seen in Italy, which had...[Read More]

'Pro-life' tactics on tissue typing

A] defeat for society at large and certainly an overwhelming defeat for Parliamentary democracy.' So read the response from Josephine Quintavalle, Director of CORE (Comment on Reproductive Ethics), to April's UK Court of Appeal decision concerning tissue typing. The Court had reversed an earlier decision, in which a judge had...[Read More]