Revisiting the Warnock rule

Abstract

This document collects together a number of reflections on the statutory time limit for maintaining human embryos in culture. This issue was raised for consideration at the Nuffield Council's annual 'forward look' meeting in February 2016. It was given an additional impetus the following month by the publication of research that suggested, for the first time, the possibility that embryos could be cultured for longer than 14 days (the current statutory limit in the UK). This led the Council to hold a workshop with the range of experts to discuss whether, after 25 years, there may be persuasive reasons to review this legal limit or whether the reasons for its introduction remain sound. * Professor Montgomery is Professor of Health Care Law, University College London and was Chair of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics (2012-17). A second set of arguments that were outside the scope of this piece of work but that would be relevant to a full reconsideration concern the relationship of the 14-day question to other social currents. We have already noted concerns about 'slippery slope' arguments that are held in some quarters. It is likely that any discussion of the embryo research rules would be affected by public confidence in the integrity of scientists. The experience of recent Parliamentary interventions, such as the developments in the regulation of mitochondrial replacement therapies, would also be 6 Legislation.gov.uk

Dissecting the dynamics of signaling events in the BMP, WNT, and NODAL cascade during self-organized fate patterning in human gastruloids

“…Although recent technical advances have made it possible to image post implantation mouse embryos at cellular resolution (42), ethical challenges make it impossible to perform similar studies in a developing human embryo (43,44). Thus, gastruloids offer a unique tool to investigate human gastrulation.…”

Adapting the 14-day rule for embryo research to encompass evolving technologies

“…The Warnock Report (1984) stated that we should avoid research on humans with 'sentience' (Nuffield, 2017). However, at 28 days, there are no functional neural connections or sensory systems in the embryo (Hurlbut et al, 2017), so this is not a valid argument against the current period of research, or against change to the HFE Act up to 28 days. The first differentiated neurons with synaptic connections do not develop until late in the fifth week (34-36 days).…”

Understanding the Mechanobiology of Early Mammalian Development through Bioengineered Models

“…For reasons partly deriving from current regulations restricting experimental work on living human embryos (Hurlbut et al, 2017), an analogous degree of knowledge does not yet exist for human development (Taniguchi et al, 2018). As such, while characterization efforts are underway (De Bakker et al, 2016;Behjati et al, 2018;Belle et al, 2017;Boroviak et al, 2018), our current understanding of the morphological features of early human development is still based on archival material of dedicated collections (De Bakker et al, 2016;Fujimoto, 2001;Gasser et al, 2014;Hertig et al, 1956), with insights into the signaling dependencies at play often relying on observations made on close primate species (see for example, Boroviak and Nichols, 2017;Nakamura et al, 2016).…”