Stem cell scientists in the United Kingdom are reporting today a gene discovery that suggests a way to take adult cells back to an embryonic state — a discovery that could help treat diseases without relying on controversial human embryonic stem cells or cloning.
Parents have been warned against the use of private companies to store blood from their babies’ umbilical cord.
Question of whether eggs should be harvested from woman on life support plunges specialists into tough terrain. The reason stunned the medical staff: The family wanted to explore whether eggs could be harvested from the woman and frozen so that she could become a mother posthumously.
Embryo donation is not adoption or surrogacy. The couple donating the embryo selects the recipient couple. The recipient female carries the embryo to term and becomes the delivered child’s birth mother.
The practice officially ended with the collapse of Communism in Czechoslovakia in 1990, but rights groups say the last recorded case was as recent as 2003. The Czech Republic does not keep statistics on the number of women sterilised, but in the eastern town of Ostrava alone, some 80 Roma women said they had been sterilised without their consent in the Czech health system.
China is set to formalise the rules covering sex change operations to ensure that all those who want surgery meet certain requirements. Those who apply for a sex change must be single, over 20 and have wanted the surgery for at least five years. Nearly 2,000 people are believed to have had a sex change in China, according to experts quoted by the state-run China Daily newspaper – and there could be up to 400,000 people considering having the surgery.
After 21-year-old Nikolas Colton Evans was killed in apparent bar-related altercation in Texas, his mother said her son had always wanted children and asked to have his sperm preserved so that someone might bear said children. Docs said no. Judge said yes, adding: “There were other body [that is, body parts] harvesting that was going to take place, and I didn’t see why this additional body harvesting shouldn’t take place.”
A fertility clinic’s promise to deliver the ultimate in designer babies – letting parents choose eye, hair and even skin color – is sparking a worldwide uproar. Dr. Jeff Steinberg has already let thousands decide their kids’ gender. Now he says that within the next six months, the Manhattan and L.A. offices of his Fertility Institutes will let would-be moms and dads pick whether junior has blue or brown eyes or black or blond hair.
Lifestyle factors will no longer be allowed to exclude couples from fertility treatment under revised gudelines. Lifestyle factors such as a person’s weight will no longer be a reason for health trusts to exclude them from IVF under guidance to be published this year.
A lesbian couple have won the right to NHS treatment to help them have a baby after threatening to sue health chiefs. The NHS GGC spokesman added: “There is national guidance on eligibility for NHS-funded assisted conception, including age, body mass index and an inability to conceive after two years during which there has been sexual intercourse and no use of contraception.
