Desperately seeking donors: The 'saviour siblings' decision in quintaville v human fertilisation embryology authority (UK)

The recent House of Lords decision in Quintavalle v Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority has raised difficult and complex issues regarding the extent to which embryo selection and reproductive technology can be used as a means of rectifying genetic disorders and treating critically ill children. This comment outlines the facts of Quintavalle and explores how the House of Lords approached the legal, ethical and policy issues that arose out of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority's (UK) decision to allow reproductive and embryo technology to be used to produce a 'saviour sibling' whose tissue could be used to save the life of a critically ill child. Particular attention will be given to the implications of the decision in Quintavalle for Australian family and medical law and policy. As part of this focus, the comment explores the current Australian legislative and policy framework regarding the use of genetic and reproductive technology as a mechanism through which to assist critically ill siblings. It is argued that the present Australian framework would appear to impose significant limits on the medical uses of genetic technology and, in this context, would seem to reflect many of the principles that were articulated by the House of Lords in Quintavalle.

Teaching principles of genetics through SNP analysis

An understanding of inheritance requires comprehension of genetic processes at all levels, from molecules to populations. Frequently genetics courses are separated into molecular and organismal genetics and students may fail to see the relationships between them. This is particularly true with human genetics, because of the difficulties in designing experimental approaches which are consistent with ethical restrictions, student abilities and background knowledge, and available time and materials. During 2005 we used analysis of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in two genetic regions to enhance student learning and provide a practical experience in human genetics. Students scanned databases to discover SNPs in a gene of interest, used software to design PCR primers and a restriction enzyme based assay for the alleles, and carried out an analysis of the SNP on anonymous individual and family DNAs. The project occupied eight to ten hours per week for one semester, with some time spent in the laboratory and some spent in database searching, reading and writing the report. In completing their projects, students acquired a knowledge of Mendel’s first law (through looking at inheritance patterns), Mendel’s second law and the exceptions (the concepts of linkage and linkage disequilibrium), DNA structure (primer design and restriction enzyme analysis) and function (SNPs in coding and non-coding regions), population genetics and the statistical analysis of allele frequencies, genomics, bioinformatics and the ethical issues associated with the use of human samples. They also developed skills in presentation of results by publication and conference participation. Deficiencies in their understanding (for example of inheritance patterns, gene structure, statistical approaches and report writing) were detected and guidance given during the project. SNP analysis was found to be a powerful approach to enhance and integrate student understanding of genetic concepts.

A model for the integration of legal research into Australian undergraduate law curricula

The marginalisation of the teaching and learning of legal research in the Australian law school curriculum is, in the author's experience, a condition common to many law schools. This is reflected in the reluctance of some law teachers to include legal research skills in the substantive law teaching schedule — often the result of unwillingness on the part of law school administrators to provide the resources necessary to ensure that such integration does not place a disproportionately heavy burden of assessment on those who are tempted. However, this may only be one of many reasons for the marginalisation of legal research in the law school experience. Rather than analyse the reasons for this marginalisation, this article deals with what needs to be done to rectify the situation, and to ensure that the teaching of legal research can be integrated into the law school curriculum in a meaningful way. This requires the use of teaching and learning theory which focuses on student-centred learning. This article outlines a model of legal research. It incorporates five transparent stages which are: analysis, contextualisation, bibliographic skills, interpretation and assessment and application.

Development of a web-service-agents-based family wealth management system

The roiling financial markets, constantly changing tax law and increasing complexity of planning transaction increase the demand of aggregated family wealth management (FWM) services. However, current trend of developing such advisory systems is mainly focusing on financial or investment side. In addition, these existing systems lack of flexibility and are hard to be integrated with other organizational information systems, such as CRM systems. In this paper, a novel architecture of Web-service-agents-based FWM systems has been proposed. Multiple intelligent agents are wrapped as Web services and can communicate with each other via Web service protocols. On the one hand, these agents can collaborate with each other and provide comprehensive FWM advices. On the other hand, each service can work independently to achieve its own tasks. A prototype system for supporting financial advice is also presented to demonstrate the advances of the proposed Webservice- agents-based FWM system architecture.