|
The British government's fertility watchdog has scrapped plans for a 30-fold increase in embryo research license fees, The Scientist has learned. The news was greeted with great relief by researchers.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) earlier this year published plans to increase its fees for processing research licenses from £200 (USD $360) to £6000 (USD $10,700) in order to comply with government regulations. The plans met with criticism from the research community, and UK stem cell scientists in particular warned that it would stifle research in their discipline.
Then, the HFEA saw little hope in finding money from elsewhere as UK government guidelines state that the cost of regulation should be met by those being regulated.
But a senior HFEA official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said this week that the controversial plans have been shelved. The Department of Health has decided that it will allow the HFEA to subsidize processing costs from its block grant, drastically cutting the necessary rise in license fees.
Under new plans currently with UK ministers for approval, fees would increase to £750 (USD $1340) for large, complex projects using human embryos and £500 (USD $890) for smaller ones. All licenses will be valid for a 3-year period.
Although the new plans have still not been officially approved, the HFEA source said the compromises were almost certain to go ahead. "I think it very unlikely that the Department of Health will not accept the proposal," the source said.
The news was welcomed by the research community. Simon Festing, director of public dialogue at the Association of Medical Research Charities and one of those who brought the £6000 fee plans to public attention, said it was good news for medical research in the United Kingdom.
"Stem cell science is a fledgling area of research that needs all the help it can get. Patient organizations will be relieved to see fewer obstacles ahead," Festing said. "In the face of stiff international competition, the government should apply a light touch to the regulation of medical research."
However, the increase may still cause problems for less high-profile areas of embryo research. For example, clinical research on in vitro fertilization (IVF), in which tight regulation means that anything that is licensed as treatment must have a research license, could still be squeezed.
Alison Murdoch, head of IVF research at the University of Newcastle and chairman of the British Fertility Society, told The Scientist she hopes research funders will include funding for the new license fees in research grants.
"The problem before was that the amount was prohibitive," she said. However, she said, £750 to conduct basic development work in IVF treatments would still be a lot money for a fertility clinic. "It would pay for half an IVF treatment," she said.
According to Murdoch, there are still severe problems with a law that regulates the use of human embryos in research and treatments and that sets down what activities need licenses. She said that it is "really disappointing" that in some cases, research projects need to be devised for simple things such as teaching someone a new lab technique, necessarily incurring a research license fee.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act came into force in 1990 and is under revision. A committee of members of parliament is currently investigating the need for it to change, and is expected to publish its report next year.
The HFEA told The Scientist it did not want to comment on the nature of the proposals it had handed in to the Department of Health at the beginning of September until ministers had made their decision.
References
|
Register for FREE Online Access
Subscribe to the Magazine