Hype and honours
Is a knighthood part of a publicity campaign for three-parent embryos? Was a Queen’s birthday knighthood part of a publicity campaign? Every year Queen Elizabeth...
3-person babies may not be as close as media suggest
Nature article by UK scientists claims method is safe, but there are questions The headline in the BBC was “Three-person babies IVF technique ‘safe’”. This...
Interview: ‘democratic deliberation’ and bioethics
Recently we spoke with COL Nelson L. Michael about bioethical deliberation in an age of rapid social and scientific change. With an election round the...
Bioethics commission sets out game plan for creating consensus
Rapid innovation in the wake of the development of the CRISPR gene editing technology has not caught the US Presidential Commission for the Study of...
Paris conference investigates CRISPR potential
All the highlights CRISPR and other gene-editing technologies hold great promise for treating disease. However, they also provoke significant ethical concerns, especially about germline modification...
Three parent babies – but only males
The US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine has recommended that US government allow mitochondrial DNA transfer in male embryos. The US National Academies...
Debating the word “naturalness”
I’m not surprised that a new report from the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, an influential independent British bioethics think tank, has received no publicity. “Ideas...
Doin’ what comes natur’lly
Nuffield Council on Bioethics releases report on "naturalness" A new medical technology encounters the most resistance when Joe Bloggs thinks it is “unnatural”. If you...
3-parent IVF approved by British Parliament
Bill passes by a vote of 382 to 128. How did scientists win the PR battle? After years of debate, the British House of Commons...
US stem cell expert questions UK plans for 3-parent embryos
A noble goal, but there are too many unanswered questions. The British Parliament will begin debating whether to legalise a controversial technique known to opponents...
Ground shifts in UK debate over “three-parent embryos”
New Scientist magazine does an ethical back flip. Is UK’s battle over “three-parent embryos”, as it is called in the media, or mitochondrial transfer, as...
At long last, a follow-up study of “cytoplasmic transfer”
About 30 children conceived from this technique have been born, 17 of them from an American IVF clinic between 1996 and 2002. The United Kingdom...