̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - assisted reproduction

Assisted reproduction kids grow up just fine – but it may be better to tell them early about biological origins

cg605 — Thu, 13 Apr 2023 05:00:52 +0000

̽��ֱ��study, by ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge researchers, is the first to examine the long-term effects of different types of third-party assisted reproduction on parenting and child adjustment, as well as the first to investigate prospectively the effect of the age at which children were told that they were conceived by egg donation, sperm donation or surrogacy.

̽��ֱ��results, published today in Developmental Psychology, suggest that the absence of a biological connection between children and parents in assisted reproduction families does not interfere with the development of positive relationships between them or psychological adjustment in adulthood. These findings are consistent with previous assessments at age one, two, three, seven, ten and 14.

̽��ֱ��findings overturn previous widely held assumptions that children born by third-party assisted reproduction are at a disadvantage when it comes to wellbeing and family relationships because they lack a biological connection to their parents.

“Despite people's concerns, families with children born through third-party assisted reproduction – whether that be an egg donor, sperm donor or a surrogate – are doing well right up to adulthood,” said Susan Golombok, Professor Emerita of Family Research and former Director of the Centre for Family Research, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, who led the study.

However, they found that mothers who began to tell their children about their biological origins in their preschool years had more positive relationships with them as assessed by interview at age 20, and the mothers showed lower levels of anxiety and depression. Most of the parents who had disclosed did so by age four and found that the child took the news well. This suggests that being open with children about their origins when they are young is advantageous.

In addition, in the final stage of this 20-year study, mothers who had disclosed their child’s origins by seven years old obtained slightly more positive scores on questionnaire measures of quality of family relationships, parental acceptance (mother’s feelings towards young adult), and family communication. For example, only 7% of mothers who had disclosed by age 7 reported problems in family relationships, compared with 22% of those who disclosed after age 7.

̽��ֱ��young adults who had been told about their origins before seven obtained slightly more positive scores on questionnaire measures of parental acceptance (young adult’s perception of mother’s feelings towards them), communication (the extent to which they feel listened to, know what’s happening in their family and receive honest answers to questions), and psychological wellbeing. They were also less likely to report problems on the family relationships questionnaire; whereas 50% of young adults told after age 7 reported such problems, this was true of only 12.5% of those told before age 7.

“There does seem to be a positive effect of being open with children when they’re young – before they go to school – about their conception. It’s something that’s been shown by studies of adoptive families too,” said Golmobok.

Researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge followed 65 UK families with children born by assisted reproduction – 22 by surrogacy, 17 by egg donation and 26 by sperm donation – from infancy through to early adulthood (20 years old). They compared these families with 52 UK unassisted conception families over the same period.

“ ̽��ֱ��assisted reproduction families were functioning well, but where we did see differences, these were slightly more positive for families who had disclosed,” said Golombok.

Reflecting on their feelings about their biological origins, the young adults were generally unconcerned. As one young adult born through surrogacy put it, “It doesn’t faze me really, people are born in all different ways and if I was born a little bit differently - that’s OK, I understand.”

Another young adult born through sperm donation said, “My dad’s my dad, my mum’s my mum, I've never really thought about how anything’s different so, it's hard to put, I don’t really care.”

Some young adults actively embraced the method of their conception as it made them feel special, “I think it was amazing, I think the whole thing is absolutely incredible. Erm…I don’t have anything negative to say about it at all.”

Researchers found that egg donation mothers reported less positive family relationships than sperm donation mothers. They suggest that this could be due to some mothers’ insecurities about the absence of a genetic connection to their child. This was not reflected in the young adults’ perceptions of the quality of family relationships.

̽��ֱ��team also found that young adults conceived by sperm donation reported poorer family communication than those conceived by egg donation. This could be explained by the greater secrecy around sperm donation than egg donation, sometimes driven by greater reluctance of fathers than mothers to disclose to their child that they are not their genetic parent, and a greater reluctance to talk about it once they have disclosed.

In fact, researchers found that only 42% of sperm donor parents disclosed by age 20, compared to 88% of egg donation parents and 100% of surrogate parents.

“Today there are so many more families created by assisted reproduction that it just seems quite ordinary,” said Golombok. “But twenty years ago, when we started this study, attitudes were very different. It was thought that having a genetic link was very important and without one, relationships wouldn’t work well.

“What this research means is that having children in different or new ways doesn’t actually interfere with how families function. Really wanting children seems to trump everything – that’s what really matters.”

This research was funded by a Wellcome Trust Collaborative Award.

Golombok, S; Jones, C; Hall, P; Foley, S; Imrie, S and Jadva, V. A longitudinal study of families formed through third-party assisted reproduction: Mother-child relationships and child adjustment from infancy to adulthood. Developmental Psychology DOI: 10.1037/dev0001526

̽��ֱ��Centre for Family Research is collaborating with the Fitzwilliam Museum on a new exhibition, Real Families: Stories of Change (October – 7 January 2024), curated by Professor Golombok. ̽��ֱ��exhibition will explore the intricacies of families and family relationships through the eyes of artists including Paula Rego, Chantal Joffe, JJ Levine, Lucian Freud and Tracey Emin.

Professor Susan Golombok is author of We Are Family: What Really Matters for Parents and Children (Scribe) which describes researching new family forms from the 1970s to the present day.

Landmark study finds no difference in psychological wellbeing or quality of family relationships between children born by assisted reproduction (egg or sperm donation or surrogacy) and those born naturally at age 20. However, findings suggest that telling children about their biological origins early – before they start school – can be advantageous for family relationships and healthy adjustment.

Having children in different or new ways doesn’t actually interfere with how families function. Really wanting children seems to trump everything – that’s what really matters.

Professor Susan Golombok

Jose Luis Pelaez Inc / DigitalVision via Getty Images

Father and son talking

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Mind Over Chatter: ̽��ֱ��future of reproduction

ns480 — Thu, 27 May 2021 12:41:58 +0000

Season 2, episode 6

Our reproductive capabilities are changing in exciting ways, altering our fundamental understanding of fertility, reproduction, and even parenthood.

In this episode of Mind Over Chatter, we ask our guests what the consequences of novel reproductive technologies are likely to be, and how they will impact the future of human reproduction.

Subscribe to Mind Over Chatter

We cover topics ranging from egg-freezing, so-called ‘three-parent-babies, and the importance of studying the embryonic development of primates.

Historical demographer, Dr Alice Reid, who researches fertility, mortality and health in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, tells us how reproduction has changed over the last 200 years and how it has been influenced by improvements in gender equality, as well as discussing the likely demographic impact of assisted reproduction.

Dr Lucy Van de Wiel, whose research focuses on the social and cultural analysis of assisted reproductive technologies such as egg freezing, introduces the important ways in which reproductive technologies must be considered in the context of wide social and political issues.

Finally, Dr Thorsten Boroviak shares his cutting-edge research on developing new reproductive technologies – the ability to generate your own egg or sperm from any cell of your body – and the importance of studying the embryonic development of primates.

Key points:

[2:10]- change of human reproduction over the last 200 years

[5:45]- egg freezing and changing meaning of what it means to be ‘fertile’

[12:05]- higher levels of gender equity can produce higher levels of fertility

[23:19]- generating eggs and sperms from any human cell

[24:02]- can a man produce an egg?

[40:37]- when should one freeze their eggs?

[64:54]- reproductive justice and reproductive equity. Ensuring reproductive autonomy while ensuring non-exploitation

[65:59]- Final question: what is the most exciting thing that will happen to humankind in the future?

Mind Over Chatter: ̽��ֱ��Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Podcast

"Reproduction matters to us all": latest issue of Horizons magazine

lw355 — Fri, 20 Nov 2020 11:26:45 +0000

Professor Kathy Niakan talks about why it’s vital to take a multidisciplined approach to understanding the urgent challenges posed by reproduction today – and introduces our Spotlight on some of this work, highlighted in the latest issue of Cambridge's Horizons magazine.

Where the river meets the sea: the making of ethical decisions

amb206 — Wed, 10 Aug 2016 07:00:00 +0000

Mid-way through her book, Making a Good Life: An Ethnography of Nature, Ethics, and Reproduction, Dr Katharine Dow describes walking on a Scottish beach and seeing, for the first time, a minke whale in the wild. It’s a grey day and all she can see is its fin dark against the waves – yet the sighting marks a turning point. Her exhilaration helps her to connect with the members of the wildlife project she is shortly to join as a volunteer.

She writes: “I began to see for myself what the fuss was about, how some people can end up devoting their lives to saving cetaceans.” But, as highly articulate as she is, she finds it hard to express in words the potency of her feelings about the whale out there in the ocean. “Something about seeing one in the wild, so close to where people were going about their ordinary business, was so strange as to seem magical.”

Dow is a social anthropologist and a research associate in the Reproductive Sociology Research Group. She has a particular interest in assisted reproductive technologies (ART), a field of medicine that is subject to fierce debate on the grounds of the ethics of “tampering with nature”. Academic research into the ramifications of ART has concentrated on those who are directly involved as active participants (for example, would-be parents undergoing treatment or children conceived via sperm donation).

Much less research has taken place into the views of the millions of people not directly involved in ART but, nevertheless, have opinions about scientific advances that, for example, enable a post-menopausal woman to conceive and carry a child. Making a Good Life helps to fill this gap by documenting in detail the views and opinions of a small community in Spey Bay, a coastal village in north-east Scotland.

̽��ֱ��community that Dow joined for 20 months in order to carry out her research is a very particular one: it comprises a small number of professionals and volunteers working for a charity dedicated to safeguarding the local environment for wildlife. Spey Bay is a Site of Special Scientific Interest and an important habitat for cetaceans, most notably a 100-strong population of bottlenose dolphins.

̽��ֱ��‘good life’ in Dow’s title is a key to understanding this small community: members of the centre have chosen to make a contribution to the environment, feel passionately about the safeguarding of vulnerable species, and try to live ‘ethically’ by making careful lifestyle choices. How these people think about ART – and surrounding questions about bringing children into the world – is shaped by their wider feelings, and interactions with, the environment.

Making a Good Life blends Dow’s account of life in a tight-knit community with details of in-depth conversations with her co-workers and others about matters of reproduction, a topic that touches on their personal experiences of being, or thinking about, parenthood. She also brings into the mix an analysis of the ethical issues under discussion, the legislation controlling ART, and work by academic colleagues on questions of kinship and belonging.

As she weaves these strands together, Dow reminds us that we don’t think about, and form opinions about, some of life’s most important questions in watertight thought compartments: how we think about ART is coloured by our wider thoughts about nature – and how our lives fit into, or stand apart from, the environment. How we feel about issues of reproduction is all about the many contexts – including the families we are part of or separated from – within which we imagine our lives.

̽��ֱ��idea of family bonds, particularly the fierce tie between a mother and her young, is something that runs deep in our picture of nature, especially so in the case of iconic species. When a minke whale calf swam into a nearby fishing harbour and was unable to find its way out, it drew crowds of concerned tourists. An adult minke spotted outside the harbour was immediately assumed to be its anxious mother.

Dow writes: “ ̽��ֱ��distant figure of the calf’s putative mother waiting in the firth, apparently unable to help it back from its reckless path into the harbour, added a particular poignancy to this stranding story. People assumed that the calf would be all the more distressed because of its separation from its ‘mother’ and that reuniting them would be the best, and perhaps only, way to ensure its survival.”

While Dow’s interviewees welcome many of the techniques that help people to fulfil their desire to have a child, they are worried by the ‘unnaturalness’ of surrogacy, an arrangement by which a woman carries a child on behalf of someone else. In unpacking the process of surrogacy, she identifies the “postpartum handover of the child”, from surrogate mother to intended parent or parents, as the defining act of this agreement. “Surrogacy is troubling because the surrogate is expected to resist a natural feeling that is supposed to be so strong that refuting it would be emotionally damaging,” she writes with reference to the views expressed by her interviewees.

“ ̽��ֱ��ethical dilemmas provoked by surrogacy demonstrate that motherhood is heavily laden with moral values that inscribe expectations for proper behaviour and relationships and that are articulated in the language of nature, biology and embodied feeling. Any challenge to maternal bonding, like the relinquishing of a child by a surrogate mother, seems to represent a threat to our most basic relationship and source of identity.”

In discussing questions of belonging, Dow shares aspects of her own story. Her father discovered in his mid-40s that he’d been adopted. A half-sister appears in his life and then two more. All had been adopted by different couples, who may not have been informed that their adoptive children had siblings. Dow’s father learns that his mother died giving birth to twins, unattended in a Dundee flat. Mother and twins were found dead, a tragedy that left many unanswered questions.

Events local to Spey Bay, and responses to them as they unfold, punctuate Dow’s narrative. Her book opens with the death of a sperm whale. Its carcass is washed up on the beach a 40-minute drive from the wildlife centre and people congregate to see it. Talking later, the leader of the centre describes the atmosphere as “reverential”. Onlookers are shocked to see that its lower jaw has been hacked off; there is a global black market trade in whale teeth. Whales are protected by law and a criminal investigation is launched.

Reverence and outrage are complex emotions unique to humans – as is a sense of what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’. “Ethics is profoundly emotional … ̽��ֱ��public ethics of ART has commonly centred on visceral reactions and often it is difficult for people to explain why something is unethical except to say that it simply seems wrong … Listening to feelings and recognising when we have transgressed 'feeling rules' can be a way of mapping the ethical terrain,” writes Dow.

“One of the best ways of getting at ethics, of following its fluid flow as it is made and reproduced is talking. Data, in ethnographic fieldwork, are not latent in our interlocutors, waiting to be unearthed by the researcher; they come from the space between the ethnographer and the participant. To use an environmentalist metaphor, gathering data is not about extracting a commodity, but responsibly harnessing a renewable resource by redirecting its flow.”

Spey Bay is a place “where the river meets the sea”, the title of a poem by the poet John Mackie, whom Dow meets in the course of researching her book. This merging of the waters neatly echoes Dow’s own breaking of boundaries between gender studies, anthropology and travelogue. She shows us how free-flowing and ultimately elusive our ideas of the world really are.

Making a Good Life: An Ethnography of Nature, Ethics, and Reproduction is published by Princeton ̽��ֱ�� Press. Dr Katharine Dow is a research associate with the Reproductive Sociology Research Group. ̽��ֱ��group supports research and teaching on the social and cultural implications of new reproductive technologies. It is led by Professor Sarah Franklin.

What is our place in the natural world – and how do we feel about the scientific advances that are changing the way we live? In her book Making a Good Life, Dr Katharine Dow explores the ethics of assisted reproductive technology in conversations with members of a small Scottish community dedicated to protecting the environment.

̽��ֱ��ethical dilemmas provoked by surrogacy demonstrate that motherhood is heavily laden with moral values that inscribe expectations for proper behaviour and relationships and that are articulated in the language of nature, biology and embodied feeling.

Katharine Dow

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Bottlenose dolphins in the Moray Firth. Scotland

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Egg freezing: An empowering option for women?

fpjl2 — Mon, 17 Nov 2014 10:41:39 +0000

Recently, Facebook and Apple announced their decision to offer to pay for female employees to freeze their eggs, in theory, allowing women to ‘have it all’ - to pursue their career aspirations and to have biologically related ‘children’. ̽��ֱ��announcement by these companies has generated much international debate about social egg freezing itself, and the companies’ offer. While proponents of social egg freezing argue that it is liberating for women, opponents contest that the technology provides an individualist solution to a social problem.

In October 2012, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine declared that egg freezing should no longer be considered experimental. As a young woman scholar of assistive reproductive technologies I have spent much time considering the debates in favor and opposing this technology.

Much of what has been written about egg freezing has come from women, often older, with families, and more established in their careers. Along with three other scholars of assistive reproductive technologies, Alana Cattapan, Lesley Tarasoff, and Jennie Haw, we sought to explore this question regarding the empowerment of these technologies, and to offer our perspective, as women at whom these types of technologies are directed. Coinciding with the media reports about Apple and Facebook was the publication, in the International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics (IJFAB), of a piece we wrote that arose from our discussion and debate of the topic.

In the article, we combine our personal experiences with our collective academic knowledge and reflections to challenge the promotion of social egg freezing on a number of grounds. Social egg freezing has been largely lauded for its potential on the basis that it enables women to ‘have it all’, by allowing them to focus on their careers and have children later on. This, however, is a tremendous oversimplification of the real world challenges of working in increasingly competitive environments. This individual ‘solution’ to social reasons for delayed childbearing takes the focus away from much needed structural change surrounding childbearing and parenthood in the workplace and home. While Apple and Facebook’s offer to pay for egg freezing makes it accessible for their female employees, it should not be forgotten that these are expensive technologies that are inaccessible to many women.

̽��ֱ��marketing and media coverage of egg freezing has also been problematic. We are concerned about how the marketing of the technology sets out a moral imperative for women to engage in egg freezing, a risky biomedical intervention. ̽��ֱ��media coverage of the ASRM’s decision to list the experimental label on egg freezing downplayed the physiological risks of the procedure. At this point in time there is little known about the health effects of egg retrieval, and to date there has been no longitudinal research on the health effects of the procedure. There are also risks associated with undergoing pregnancy at an advanced reproductive age. A moral imperative to use this risky technology may be exacerbated by its acceptance and accessibility for Apple and Facebook employees. This may also be accompanied by an expectation of employees to then wait to have children.

Finally, as with other assisted reproductive technologies, the context of this technology continues to be forgotten. This technology should be considered in context of the for-profit, largely unregulated industry providing this service, and the broader politics surrounding the commodification of women’s bodies and tissues in reproductive and scientific research. Little attention has been paid to what will happen with the surplus frozen eggs, and potential for a transnational market for surplus eggs for use in scientific research, or personal use.

While social egg freezing has been lauded for its potential to allow women to ‘have it all’, we argue that there are strong reasons to challenge it. Similarly, there are strong reasons to be critical of offers such as those by Facebook and Apple that condone this technology and that may contribute to a moral imperative for their employees to engage in this risky technology, and to postpone childbearing. To stress our argument in the commentary, egg freezing is not necessarily an empowering option. It is a risky, intrusive procedure for which there is still little research. It is shortsighted, and simultaneously fails to challenge the very conditions that produce its need.

Katie Hammond, a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology researching the experience of egg donation in Canada, discusses the recent decision by tech giants Facebook and Apple to offer egg freezing to female employees, and why she co-authored a recent commentary on this subject.

This technology should be considered in context of the for-profit, largely unregulated industry providing this service

Katie Hammond

Public domain

ICSI sperm injection into oocyte

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Who do you think you are?

amb206 — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 08:15:18 +0000

Jiten was 13 years old when his mother told him that he had been conceived with donor sperm. ̽��ֱ��man Jiten had always thought was his father, and had lived with Jiten and his mother until he was five, was not his genetic father. He says: “I remember running downstairs to talk to my step-dad. It was a relief as I really didn’t get on with the man I’d seen as my dad – and I’d always got on brilliantly with my step-dad.”

Families are changing, not just as a result of a breakdown of conventional family structures but also because of advances in assisted reproductive technologies. No-one knows exactly how many children born in the UK each year are conceived using donated sperm, eggs or embryos - but in 2009 the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) put the figure at 1,756.

Donation allows many thousands of people experiencing fertility problems to become parents. However, the conception of children through assisted reproductive technologies brings into play a raft of tricky ethical issues, the foremost of which is the question of disclosure.

“Should children be told that they were conceived using donated reproductive tissue? It might seem like a simple question, and the obvious answer for some may be yes, but it’s one that many parents find much harder to cope with in reality than in theory,” says John Appleby, a researcher with the Centre for Family Research, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, who is looking at the ethical considerations of disclosure.

“Most parents of donor conceived children face the dilemma of whether, when and how to tell their children about their genetic origins. I say most because, for example in the case of same-sex couples and single parents, the child may well seek answers to obvious questions about their conception though that doesn’t mean that disclosure is an easy task. For many parents, if and when to begin to tell a child that he or she has been conceived with the help of donated tissue is a real dilemma. Every family is different and families are not isolated units but part of wider communities.”

In his research, Appleby, who has a background in philosophy, has focused on the ethical questions that underlie the matter of disclosure, set against the legal and policy landscape in the UK, with a view to creating a framework for discussion.

Legislation took effect on April 1 2005, which allowed anyone conceived with donated tissue after that date to have, at the age of 18, the right to access information about the identity of their donor via records held by the UK’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA).

Not until 2023 will it begin to be apparent how many donor-conceived young people might seek out identifying information about their donors from the HFEA. If adoption law is any guide, then the numbers will not be insignificant. Jiten, who is 22, says that not having the right to information about his genetic father doesn’t bother him – although he’d be “curious enough to find out” if he could.

As the legislation stands, young people will not know that they have been donor conceived unless they have been told – and only those with this knowledge will have any reason seek access to the information held about their donor. This situation puts the onus firmly on the parents to make the decision about disclosure.

Existing research into the impact of disclosure (or non-disclosure) has looked at the psycho-social well-being of families, comparing families who have and have not told their child that he/she was donor conceived. Studies conducted at the Centre for Family Research have revealed no marked differences between families who had not disclosed to their children by early adolescence and those who had.

“Given these findings, you might ask: ‘What’s the point of telling children?’ But that ignores the risk of them finding out by accident, such as overhearing a conversation, and suffering some kind of harm,” says Appleby.

“As researchers we know of a few cases where children found out as teenagers that they were donor conceived and reported experiencing certain harms such as feeling lied to or deceived. On the other hand, we know of others who did not report any harm on discovering that they were donor conceived. All in all, we still need to gather more empirical evidence before any significant judgements can be made about the impact of disclosure, or non-disclosure, on the well-being of individuals later in life.”

To date, Appleby has concentrated on the ways in which disclosure impacts on the issues of trust and identity, among others. “When I looked at some of the cases in which individuals reported harm from late or accidental disclosure, one of the harms they reported was from losing trust in others,” said Appleby.

“Basically, if their parents had withheld information from them – lied, in fact – they reported experiencing a loss of trust in their parents, and sometimes in other people in their lives as well. In view of this, parents might be advised to opt for an approach which minimised the chance of losing their children’s trust. Trust is very important to young people and loss of trust in an aspect of a relationship can have a knock-on effect on other aspects.”

Television programmes such as the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? and ITV’s Long Lost Family tend to focus on the emotional impact of having to re-think identity in the light of new information about their family backgrounds. As Jiten’s experiences illustrate so vividly, every scenario and every family is different. Identity is an aspect of the human condition that can be fundamental to well-being – but each individual is likely to shape their identity using different points of reference, not all of them related directly to genetic ties.

Jiten says: “My experience is made more complex by the fact that my mum and the man I thought was my dad, as well as my genetic dad, are all Indian. My step-dad is white and I’ve been brought up in a household that blends two cultures. There are certain expectations that go along with being an Indian male and when I was able to separate myself mentally from my first dad, I felt free of these expectations. For me identity is as much to do with culture as genetics. Most importantly, when I was 18 or so, I realised that there was only one person responsible for who I am – and that’s me.”

Each year in the UK over a thousand children are conceived using donor tissue. Many parents find it hard to tell their children that they were donor conceived. Bioethicist John Appleby, from Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Centre for Family Research, is looking at some of the ethical questions surrounding disclosure.

Trust is very important to young people and loss of trust in an aspect of a relationship can have a knock-on effect on other aspects.

John Appleby

nick see (flickr Creative Commons)

Fall leaves

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A boost for family research

ns480 — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:54:13 +0000

A report on work carried out by the Centre for Family Research (CFR) was awarded the Fertility Society of Australia (FSA) Exchange prize at the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in Barcelona.

̽��ֱ��research is being carried out by Polly Casey, Lucy Blake, Jennifer Readings and Dr Vasanti Jadva, and is led by Professor Susan Golombok. With funding from the US National Institutes for Health (NIH), the longitudinal study is looking at parent–child relationships and the psychological well-being of children in families created by surrogacy, egg donation and donor insemination. ̽��ֱ��study is also examining whether and when parents decide to tell their children about their origins.

̽��ֱ��CFR is based in the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences. ‘To be awarded a prize for the best presentation at an international conference is a remarkable achievement for the Centre for Family Research given that the competitors were largely from the biological and biomedical sciences,’ said Professor Golombok, Director of the CFR. ‘ ̽��ֱ��award enabled the researchers to travel to Brisbane to present a paper at the recent FSA conference.’

For more information, please contact Polly Casey (pc371@cam.ac.uk).

A team studying the psychological well-being of children created by assisted reproduction has been awarded a prize for their work.

To be awarded a prize for the best presentation at an international conference is a remarkable achievement for the Centre for Family Research given that the competitors were largely from the biological and biomedical sciences.

Professor Golombok

Stefanie Reichelt, Cancer Research UK-Cancer Research Institute

'Life Race'

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