Slowing the Rush to Genetically Modified Babies
By Enola Aird,
MomsRising
| 03. 22. 2014
We are heading toward a slippery slope. The United Kingdom is moving closer to allowing scientists to create genetically modified children – something no country in the world currently authorizes.
I posted
in December about how the United States and the U.K. were going down a dangerous road. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), the key U.K. regulator on these matters,
recently issued (on very short notice), a “Call for evidence” on issues of safety and efficacy, with a deadline of today, March 21, 2014.
HFEA has released draft regulations that would allow clinical trials of techniques that would create “three-person embryos.” These methods are proposed as a way to help a very small number of women with certain mitochondrial diseases to avoid passing those diseases on to genetically related children. The draft notes that “the Government has decided to proceed with regulations. However, before taking the decision to submit regulations for the scrutiny and approval of Parliament, we will…reconvene the Expert Panel a further time to provide an updated assessment of the safety and efficacy of these techniques.”...
Related Articles
By Emma McDonald Kennedy
| 09.25.2025
In the leadup to the 2024 election, Donald Trump repeatedly promised to make IVF more accessible. He made the commitment central to his campaign, even referring to himself as the “father of IVF.” In his first month in office, Trump issued an executive order promising to expand IVF access. The order set a 90-day deadline for policy recommendations for “lowering costs and reducing barriers to IVF,” although it didn’t make any substantive reproductive healthcare policy changes.
The response to the...
Sir Francis Galton, 1890s, by Eveleen Myers (née Tennant)
npg.org
Public Domain via Wikipedia
As has been discussed in recent issues of Biopolitical Times (1, 2), there are, increasingly, companies that claim to be selling parents better babies by selecting the “best” embryos. These services don’t come cheap – think $50,000, or even more, for embryo testing, plus perhaps as much again for IVF and concomitant services. To most of us, that is extremely expensive...
By Margaux MacColl, The San Francisco Standard | 09.17.2025
Designer babies are coming soon to an IVF clinic near you.
Nucleus Genomics, founded by Kian Sadeghi in 2020, when he was just 20, got its start analyzing genomes to weigh a person’s risk of everything from cancer to ADHD...
By Marianne Lamers, NEMO Kennislink [cites CGS' Katie Hasson] | 09.23.2025
Een rijtje gespreide vulva’s gaapt de bezoeker aan. Zó ziet een bevalling eruit, en zó een baarmoeder met foetus. Een zwangerschap, maar dan zonder zwangere vrouw, gestript van zorgen, gêne en pijn. De zwangerschapsmodellen en oefenbekkens, te zien in de...