Erratum: Navigating an ethical patchwork—human gene banks

Navigating with an Ethical Rudder

Sperm Banks - Ethical Considerations

A sperm donor will be biological father of every child produced as a result of his donation. However, he is not intended to be a legal father. Sperm can be stored for as long as twenty years. However, only 50% of the sperm cells survive that time and have normal capability to fertilize the egg. The first successful artificial insemination of a woman with her husband's sperm was recorded in 1790...

Umbilical cord blood banks. Ethical aspects. Public versus private banks.

The creation of umbilical cord blood (UCB) banks raises interesting medical, social, economic and ethical issues. This paper reviews the ethical problems specifically. In this respect, it evaluates: a) whether there are advantages to the use of UCB compared to bone marrow, b) whether or not it is ethical to create UCB banks, c) whether their creation is ethically acceptable in terms of their cl...

Legal and ethical responsibilities of gamete banks.

In the UK, following many years of consultation and debate, Parliament passed the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act in 1990. This introduced a system of detailed regulation of banks and clinics undertaking the storage and use of gametes and embryos in the UK. The law established the framework for the system and set up the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to implement it ...

An empirical study of tissue banking in Australia: navigating regulatory and ethical challenges.

Collections of tumour samples can be an invaluable resource for medical research. There are, however, numerous ethical and legal challenges associated with tumour banking. While there has been extensive discussion of these issues in the legal and ethical literature, there are few available empirical data in relation to the activities of tumour banks in Australia, their practices around ethicall...