Outspoken fertility expert Lord Robert Winston has called for the UK’s fertility regulator to be scrapped. Upset by interference from the Human Embryology and Fertilisation Authority in requests for pre-implantation genetic diagnosis and saviour siblings, he wants the practice of fertility medicine to be self-regulated. He called the HFEA incompetent and bureaucratic and suggested that it was scaring the public unnecessarily. “It also may be true that public regulatory bodies increase public anxiety because they focus on something, suggesting there may be anxiety when really there isn’t any need for it,” he told the BBC. Although experts defended the HFEA against Lord Winston’s attack, most acknowledged that the 14-year-old organisation needed a good shake-up.

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