Cash incentives and the payment of funeral expenses are two ideas being put forward to encourage people to donate human organs and tissue. The Nuffield Council on Bioethics is asking the public if it is ethical to use financial incentives to increase donations of organs, eggs and sperm. Paying for most types of organs and tissue is illegal in the UK. The public consultation will last 12 weeks and the council's findings will be published in autumn 2011.
We provide our bodies or parts of our bodies for medical research or for the treatment of others in a number of ways and for a variety of reasons. However, there is a shortage of bodily material for many of these purposes in the UK. What should be done about it? The Council has set up a Working Party, chaired by Professor Dame Marilyn Strathern, to explore the ethical issues raised by the provision of bodily material for medical treatment and research. Questions to be considered include: * what motivates people to provide bodily material and what inducements or incentives are appropriate? * what constitutes valid consent? * what future ownership or control people should have over donated materials? * are there ethical limits on how we try to meet demand?
Anti-abortion campaigners are pressing ahead with a controversial amendment to the Government’s new health bill designed to cut the number of pregnancies which are terminated each year in the UK. The Conservative MP Nadine Dorries, who is proposing the amendment, said yesterday she would not be “bought off” by the promise of a Government consultation on whether or not to offer independent counselling to all women considering an abortion. Instead she said she wanted to change the law to strip abortion charities and doctors of their exclusive responsibility for counselling women seeking to terminate a pregnancy, and hand it to specially trained professionals.
The treatment of inherited mitochondrial abnormalities in human embryos using donor mitochondria is an advancing area of research. The techniques involved could have profound implications for future generations. This project will explore the ethical issues relevant to affected families, potential donors, researchers, medical professionals and others trying to understand and respond to the therapeutic possibility of mitochondrial transfer.
Standards should never come into question, but it's clear to this Government that NHS administrative costs can be streamlined. Estimates suggest that savings of over £180 million could be delivered by 2015 by reducing the number of NHS bodies, including arm's-length bodies. And that is why I set out proposals to change responsibility for regulating fertility treatment and human tissue last week. The UK-wide consultation will consider whether the responsibilities of the regulators - the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) and Human Tissue Authority (HTA) - should move to the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and the Health Research Authority (HRA).