鈥淚F SOMEONE thinks there might be something dodgy going on in their lab, they should inform us.鈥� So says Suzi Leather, head of the UK鈥檚 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), who on 24 May presented a series of measures designed to prevent malpractice in British fertility clinics and stem cell labs.
The HFEA is anxious to avoid a repeat in the UK of the cloning fraud scandal which erupted last year in South Korea involving the now-disgraced 鈥渃loning king鈥� Woo Suk Hwang. It plans to set up a formal system through which whistle-blowers can channel their concerns without putting themselves at risk. Other measures include increased scrutiny of labs and clinics that hold licences to experiment on embryos, and ways to make peer reviewers more accountable.
The most important issue is to ensure human egg donors are protected from coercion of the kind that came to light in Korea, Leather says. Such practices have recently been exposed in Europe too, where a Romanian clinic was found to be selling women鈥檚 eggs to fertility clinics in the UK. 鈥淭he key area of risk, at least for the HFEA, is donation of eggs, not scientific fraud,鈥� Leather says. 鈥淩ecent events testify to the emotional hazards that egg donation can involve.鈥�
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