Cloning's egg donors get cheap IVF

WOMEN undergoing IVF treatment will be able to cut thousands of dollars from the cost by donating some of their eggs for cloning research, after the practice was approved in Britain for the first time.

The scheme will be available at the fertility clinic that created Britain's first cloned human embryo. It was approved by the fertility regulator yesterday, even though the regulator itself begins a public consultation on the ethics of egg donation for research in September.

The licence from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority means that patients at the Newcastle Fertility Centre at Life will in effect be paid in kind for their eggs. Up to half their treatment costs will be covered by a scientific team investigating stem cells if they agree to give up 50 per cent of the eggs they produce for use in experiments.

The researchers, from the North East England Stem Cell Institute, hope to collect eggs from one woman a week, providing a reliable source of the fresh eggs that are needed to create cloned embryos. Research into therapeutic cloning, which aims to develop embryonic stem cell treatments for conditions such as Parkinson's disease and diabetes, has been hampered by a shortage of suitable eggs.

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