First clinical report of 179 surrogacy cases in the UK: implications for policy and practice.

Research Question: What implications for policy and practice can be derived from outcomes and trends observed across 8 years of a surrogacy programme in two UK-regulated IVF centres (London, Cardiff)?

Design: Retrospective cohort study analysing surrogacy treatments undertaken between 2014 and September 2021.

Results: Surrogacy continues to rise in popularity in the UK despite the inability of those supporting safe and professional practice to advertise to recruit surrogates. In two IVF centres regulated by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), both the number of surrogacy treatments and the proportion of those undertaken on behalf of same-sex male intended parents increased year on year in the period studied.

Large outbreak of Salmonella enteritidis PT8 in Portsmouth, UK, associated with a restaurant.

Seventy-five individuals with Salmonella infection were identified in the Portsmouth area during August and September 2009, predominantly Salmonella Enteritidis phage type 8. Five patients were admitted to hospital. A case-case comparison study showed that a local restaurant was the most likely source of the infection with a risk of illness among its customers 25-fold higher than that of those who did not attend the restaurant.

Minimizing risk in anonymous egg donation.

Assisted conception carries with it known and putative medical and surgical risks. Exposing healthy women to these risks in order to harvest eggs for donation when a safer alternative exists is morally and ethically unacceptable. Egg sharing minimizes risk and provides a source of eggs for donation.

One hundred and three concurrent IVF successes for donors and recipients who shared eggs: ethical and practical benefits of egg sharing to society.

Egg sharing is a form of egg donation where complete strangers can collaborate anonymously to overcome their involuntary childlessness. In a retrospective analysis, results of egg sharing treatments were analysed in 37 consecutive donors and 39 recipients who had achieved concurrent success following IVF treatment. The interval between being accepted onto the programme and receiving treatment was less than 6 months for most patients.

Should non-patient volunteers donate eggs?

Egg donation is associated with medical and surgical risks regardless of the source of eggs, be it through commercial, altruistic or more recent egg-share donors. Egg sharing is the only system that does not turn a healthy woman (the donor) into a patient. Using carefully selected egg-share donors, pregnancy rates for both donor and recipient are as good as any egg-donation programme, with one cohort of eggs being used with more efficiency.