Events

Passport to Parenthood: The Evidence and Ethics Behind Cross-Border Reproductive Care

Progress Educational Trust
Institute of Child Health, University College London, 30 Guilford Street, London WC1N 1EH, UK
24 November 2010 - 9.30am-5pm

The 2010 annual conference of the charity that publishes BioNews, the Progress Educational Trust (PET).

Cross-border reproductive care - popularly referred to as 'fertility tourism' - is the booming phenomenon of individuals and couples travelling overseas for fertility treatment. One motivation for this is the UK's acute shortage of donor sperm and eggs, resulting in long waiting lists for treatment at home. Another factor is the ability to circumvent UK fertility regulation in favour of more permissive regimes, which allow the use of sperm and eggs from anonymous donors (prohibited in the UK since 2005) or the transfer of multiple embryos to fertility patients (deprecated in the UK). There may also be more mundane reasons for receiving fertility treatment abroad, such as better quality of service, or the simple possibility of combining treatment with a holiday. PET's 2010 annual conference explored every aspect of cross-border reproductive care. Researchers investigating the scale and causes of the phenomenon presented their findings, while experts from various disciplines offered contrasting perspectives on the ethical, practical and legal ramifications.

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Find out more about fertility/embryology regulation in Human Fertilisation and Embryology: Reproducing Regulation, coedited by BioNews Contributing Editor Dr Kirsty Horsey (buy this book from Amazon UK or Amazon USA); and find out more about genetics in The Rough Guide to Genes and Cloning, coauthored by BioNews Contributing Editor Dr Jess Buxton (buy this book from Amazon UK or Amazon USA).

Further details of this event are available on the Progress Educational Trust website.