ABSTRACT
In this area, spurred on by radical developments in reproductive technology, such as in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and artificial insemination by donor (AID), the British Parliament enacted the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (HFEA) 1990, which statutorily lays down certain key principles which are as notable for statements of social policy as for legal rules which currently govern this burgeoning area of healthcare law. The HFEA 1990 was passed, in the words of Morgan and Lee (1991), summarising John Hannam MP, as a response to the perceived need for legislation ‘to regulate research on embryos, to protect the integrity of reproductive medicine and to protect scientists and clinicians from legal action and sanction’. In addition, they stress, ‘some people feared unregulated embryo research, being prepared to support work in specific areas such as infertility and genetic disease, but uneasy at the thought of reproductive technology taking more sinister directions such as genetic interference with the embryo’ (Morgan and Lee (1991), p 22). The HFEA 1990 was preceded by the setting up of the Warnock Committee in 1982 which was followed by the publication of the Warnock Report (Report of the Committee of Inquiry into Fertilisation and Embryology, subsequently republished with an introduction by Dame Mary Warnock, the chair, as A Question of Life, 1985, Blackwell) in 1984. The HFEA 1990 was described in April 1990 by the then Secretary for Health, Kenneth Clarke, as one of the most significant measures of its kind to be brought before Parliament in the last 20 years.
