FERTILITY regulators have triggered a new row over designer babies by allowing doctors to destroy embryos affected by more than 100 genetic conditions, including many illnesses that are not life-threatening. The genetic “defects” that can now be routinely screened out include conditions carried by a number of leading figures, such as Pete Sampras, the tennis champion, and Sergei Rachmaninoff, the Russian concert pianist and composer. In some cases it will mean the elimination of an embryo that has been identified as carrying genetic material inherited from a stricken grandparent, but which may not necessarily develop the same illness. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), has published a list of 116 inherited conditions that fertility clinics can screen out without requiring special permission.
Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) is a technique that enables people with a specific inherited condition in their family to avoid passing it on to their children. It involves checking the genes of embryos created through IVF for this genetic condition. Before PGD clinics are permitted to test for a condition or combination of conditions, the HFEA must first agree that the condition they want to test for is sufficiently serious. This list of conditions are those that the HFEA has so far agreed that it is acceptable for clinics to use PGD to test for.
The article in the Sunday Times last week ‘Embryos destroyed for minor disorders’ was inaccurate and misleading and could cause confusion and distress for those families undergoing or considering IVF treatment with pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). PGD is licensed only for serious medical conditions which severely threaten the future health and wellbeing of children. It is not a ‘routine’ procedure. In 2007, out of nearly 37,000 patients who received fertility treatment, 169 had PGD, fewer than one in 200. Embryos are tested when they are just three days old and made up of about eight cells. They are not at the developed stage of the foetus as shown in the photograph.Finally, to suggest that embryos are destroyed for ‘minor conditions’ which would require ‘unpleasant treatment’ is not only misleading, it is disrespectful both to those living with the condition, and those seeking to avoid passing on these serious conditions to their children.
The new parenthood provisions set out in Part 2 of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 have been attacked as dangerous and radical, offering a 'lego-kit model of family life' and a 'magical mystery tour' in how legal fatherhood is to be determined. In this paper, we explain what is innovative about these new provisions but also explore what they owe to deep-rooted traditional assumptions about the family. Relying both on published documentation relating to this reform process and a small number of key actor interviews, we trace the imprint of what Fineman has described as the 'sexual family' model on the provisions. We conclude that the way that parenthood is framed within the legislation relies on a number of important normative assumptions which received very little scrutiny in this process. We also highlight a number of tensions within this framing which, we suggest, may create future problems for judicial determination.
The UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) is investigating websites that match up sperm donors with women who want to conceive, to see whether they may be breaking the law. The move by the HFEA follows the conviction at Southwark Crown Court in London of Ricky Gage and Nigel Woodforth, who made £250 000 (€295 000; $400 000) from their company Fertility 1st, which couriered sperm from donors to women who were trying to conceive. The pair face a possible jail term when they are sentenced in October. They fell foul of a law that makes the procurement of gametes, including human sperm, illegal without a licence from the HFEA.
Clinicians and egg donors have signalled their support for a rise in the amount of compensation paid to women who donate eggs to infertile women in the United Kingdom, as the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority prepares to launch a public consultation on the subject.
Compensation paid to egg and sperm donors in the United Kingdom could be increased to include a payment for inconvenience, in a bid to tackle an acute shortage of donated gametes. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), which regulates infertility treatment, raises the possibility in a review of its policies on egg and sperm donation launched on 17 January. European law bans payment for donated gametes but allows donors to be compensated for expenses, loss of earnings, and inconvenience. Current HFEA rules allow egg donors to be reimbursed for loss of earnings and expenses, such as travel costs, up to a maximum of £250 (€300; $400). But nothing can be claimed for the physical inconvenience that gamete donors experience, even though egg donation is invasive and sperm donation time consuming.
Should the UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) be rescued from the axe, or should it, as the UK government proposes, be allowed to perish, its functions absorbed by larger, more general bodies? At a panel discussion organised by the Progress Educational Trust at the Royal Society in central London, three of the four speakers favoured retaining a specialist regulator of infertility treatment and embryo research. But Alison Murdoch, professor of reproductive medicine at Newcastle University’s Institute of Human Genetics, disagreed and called for an independent review of the HFEA’s function in regulating treatment.