Free medical student places available!
PET Annual Conference: '40 years after the Warnock Report: What is the Embryo's Special Status?'
Wednesday 4th December 2024
9.00 am – 5.00pm (GMT)
Venue: International Students House, 229 Great Portland Street, London, W1W 5PN
40 years ago, the Warnock Report – commissioned by the UK Government – set the terms on which assisted conception and embryo research would be regulated, shaping UK law while also influencing ethical and regulatory thinking around the world.
The authors of the report ‘considered what status ought to be accorded to the human embryo’, in light of the (then new) possibility of in vitro fertilisation. They defined the human embryo in relation to a ‘starting point’, namely ‘the meeting of egg and sperm at fertilisation’. They concluded that that ‘the embryo of the human species ought to have a special status’, and that this status ‘should be enshrined in legislation’.
Today, rapid advances in reproduction-related science and medicine – together with wider developments in society and politics – are casting new light on the status, and the very definition, of the human embryo.
40 years on from Warnock, this conference will see speakers including the Chair of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology and the Chief Executive of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority – plus a wide range of leading practitioners, researchers, ethicists, lawyers and others – revisit the question of ‘what status ought to be accorded to the human embryo’.
The IME has provided funding for 8 medical students to attend the conference free of charge. Medical students wishing to apply for one of these places should email sstarr@progress.org.uk
The FREE places include lunch, morning/afternoon refreshments, and the closing drinks reception.
This is an in person conference taking place in central London, and will not be livecast or recorded.
For further details of this event, including the list of speakers, click here