Y revelations

it is required by law to keep an eye on any human embryo created in any other way than by the natural proceedings. In December 2002, the High Court seriously undermined the HFEA's position when it decided that its ruling that allowed the Hashmi family to use embryo selection had exceeded its legal powers. In May, however, the appeal court overturned that judgment and cleared the last legal hurdle for the Hashmis. Even if the campaigners opposing their treatment take the case to the House of Lords, the Hashmis can proceed with their treatment. All this goes to show that a specialised authority like the HFEA, which supervises all embryo-related activities and makes individual judgements in those especially tricky cases that make the headlines, is a very useful thing to have, but that it may run into serious problems if the legislation does not keep up with scientific progress. The law that brought the HFEA into existence is 13 years old, a timespan in which the reproduction field has changed beyond recognition. Next to keeping up with the fast-moving technical possibilities, the biggest challenge is international coordination. Currently, religious views still determine what can be done where. The Jewish faith doesn't count the embryo as a human being, so Israel is a paradise for people who want to produce stem cells. At the other end of the spectrum, the strong influence of Christian fundamentalism on US politics makes stem cell research more and more difficult in the United States. Until politicians are willing to accept the assessment of scientific developments without religious prejudice, both researchers and families in need of advanced treatment will probably continue to vote with their feet. It's not every day that scientists offer themselves up as 'straight men,' to lay the groundwork for the perfect joke. David Page and his colleagues performed this duty admirably in the pages of Nature. The subject, naturally, was sex — or close enough: sex chromosomes. Page, a Howard Hughes scholar at the Whitehead Institute and MIT, and his happy band performed a rather amazing feat. They waded through the terrifying tangle of DNA that is the human Y chromosome and they actually made sense of it. Not even the exalted fly guys, the Drosophila sequencers, could claim this treasure. Page and company deciphered the essence of man. And when they were done, they had quite the story to tell about …