Embryonic developments

A baby girl born in 1978 forced the UK government to create ground-breaking legislation on human embryos. The birth of IVF baby Louise Brown and the subsequent rapid spread of the new method led to calls for regulation and boundaries for the IVF technology and for the science around human embryos in general. The government responded to these concerns with the 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, which set up the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) and briefed it with the task not only of supervising and regulating IVF clinics, but also of keeping an eye on all the bioethical issues surrounding human embryos. What John Major’s government at the time couldn’t know was that this brief would grow to enormous size and importance within a few years. The advent of human embryonic stem cells, with their promise for regenerative medicine and the spectre of human cloning, placed the HFEA in the eye of a bioethics storm, which it has weathered remarkably well. Compared with other countries, where legislators were wrongfooted by the rapid rise of bioethics issues, the UK had the benefit of an early mover, thanks to the pioneering work of its IVF doctors. As was unavoidable, considering its early start, the UK legislation began to look dated after the turn of the century, as unforeseen progress continued, and attitudes to parenthood shifted. Thus, a major revision of the act was prepared and received Royal Assent in November 2008. New regulations concerning the parenthood rights of same-sex partners undergoing fertility treatment have already come into force in April. In October, the main parts of the new legislation, covering the creation of embryos outside the body, banning sex-selection for non-medical reasons, and clarifying the limits of embryo research, will become law. Still, stem cell research in the UK will continue to benefit from one of the most permissive legal frameworks in the Western world. In the US, by contrast, the political climate has been more challenging, as the Bush administration had been firmly opposed to the use of human embryos in research. Only in March did Barack Obama lift his predecessor’s ban on federal funding for research involving new stem cell lines. Any jubilation of stem cell researchers and supporters was soon dampened by the decision