Stem cell laws and policy in the United States
In 1973, Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in the United States. Five years later, the first successful human "in vitro" fertilization resulted in the birth of Louise Brown in England. These developments prompted the federal government to create regulations barring the use of federal funds for research that experimented on human embryos. In 1995, the NIH Human Embryo Research Panel advised the administration of President Bill Clinton to permit federal funding for research on embryos left over from "in vitro" fertility treatments and also recommended federal funding of research on embryos specifically created for experimentation. In response to the panel's recommendations, the Clinton administration, citing moral and ethical concerns, declined to fund research on embryos created solely for research purposes, but did agree to fund research on left-over embryos created by "in vitro" fertility treatments. At this point, the Congress intervened and passed the Dickey-Wicker Amendment in 1995 (the final bill, which included the Dickey Amendment, was signed into law by Bill Clinton) which prohibited any federal funding for the Department of Health and Human Services be used for research that resulted in the destruction of an embryo regardless of the source of that embryo. In 1998, privately funded research led to the breakthrough discovery of human Embryonic stem cells (hESC).
Mitochondrial replacement therapy
In the United Kingdom, following animal experiments and the recommendations of a government commissioned expert committee, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology (Research Purposes) Regulations were passed in 2001 regulating and allowing research into human embryos. In 2004, the Newcastle University applied for a licence to develop pronuclear transfer to avoid the transmission of mitochondrial diseases, and was granted the license in 2005. Following further research by Newcastle and the Wellcome Trust, scientific review, public consultations, and debate, the UK government recommended that mitochondrial donation be legalized in 2013. In 2015 parliament passed the Human Fertilisation and Embryology (Mitochondrial Donation) Regulations, which came into force on 29 October 2015, making human mitochondrial donation legal in the UK. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) was authorized to licence and regulate medical centers which wanted to use human mitochondrial donation. In February 2016, the US National Academy of Sciences issued a report describing technologies then current and the surrounding ethical issues.