ABC v Thomson Medical Pte Ltd and others, Singapore Civil Court of Appeal [2017] SGCA 20 - read judgment It is a trite reflection that law should change with the times but every so often we see the hair-pin bends in law's pursuit of modern technology. This case from Singapore about reproductive rights and negligence…
In this case, a mistake was made in the process of an in vitro-fertilisation procedure involving a Singaporean Chinese woman and her German Caucasian husband.
Mistakenly, the wife’s egg was inseminated with sperm from an unknown Indian donor.
Baby P was born healthy, but with a different skin tone.
The claimant’s affidavit states that the pain and suffering that she suffered as a result, physically, mentally and emotionally, was “beyond words” and was “agonizing”
The mission of the National-Tay Sachs & Allied Diseases Association is to lead the fight to treat and cure Tay-Sachs, Canavan and related genetic diseases and to support affected families and individuals in leading fuller lives.
The Bill provides for revised and updated legislation on assisted reproduction and for changes to the regulation and licensing of embryo use in research and therapy. A draft Bill, the Human Tissue and Embryos Bill, was scrutinised by a joint committee of both Houses. Proposed changes to the Human Tissue Act 2004, such as the establishment of a new body called RATE, have been dropped. The revised name of this Bill reflects that change. The Bill includes provision for research into different types of embryos, and proposes changes to definitions of legal parenthood for cases involving assisted reproduction. Amendments to abortion law were tabled during the passage of this Bill. These were discussed by a Committee of the whole House but not passed.
J. Crow. Journal of Heredity, (1992)Abstract When an environmental change imposes strong
directional selection, there are two advantages of
sexual reproduction. First, an asexual population is
limited to the most extreme individual in the
population, and progress under directional selection
can go no farther without mutation; no such limitation
applies to a sexual population. Second, more
quantitatively, directional selection in an asexual
population mono-tonically decreases the variance,
whereas the variance of a sexual population quickly
reaches a steady value; this difference remains even if
the direction of selection occasionally changes. With
realistic environmental changes small alterations in
any particular measurement or trait are usually
sufficient to keep up with the changes, but fitness,
since it depends on a large number of traits, will be
selected with greater intensity, which may be enough to
confer a distinct advantage on sexual reproduction.
This applies particularly to a large or rapid
environmental change. Eventually mutation will enhance
the variance, but by then it may be too late to prevent
extinction of asexual strains..