Final Report (all chapters)

• Maintain a formal register of information about donors, treatments, and children born as a
result of those treatments. 86
To discharge these functions, the HFEA has the authority to establish additional, specialized
committees. As of this writing, seven committees exist – the Regulation Committee, the
Scientific and Clinical Advances Group, the Ethics and Law Committee, the Organization and
Finance Committee, the Information Management Program Board, the Audit Committee, and the
License Committee. 87 The first three committees discharge the core HFEA functions. Members
of any of these committees are also members of the HFEA proper. Committees can establish
specialized subcommittees. Participation in a subcommittee is not restricted to HFEA members.
Outside members can be appointed to subcommittees, but HFEA members must remain in the
majority. 88
The HFE Act specifies in considerable detail the composition, responsibilities, and
procedures governing the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. The HFEA, unlike its
Australian counterpart, is not designed to be exclusively a technocratic body of governance. The
Act tries to strike a balance between two partially conflicting goals, technical competence,
including scientific, medical, legal and ethical expertise, and legitimacy. A regulatory body
consisting exclusively of technical specialists obviously would be highly competent, but the
general public may view the policies promulgated by this body with suspicion. On the other end,
a regulatory body dominated by laypersons would most likely be regarded as legitimate, but its
technical competence would be very limited.
Currently, the HFEA has 18 members, including the chairperson and the deputy. Schedule 1
of the Act (“The Authority: Supplementary Provisions”) does not specify the size of this board;
that decision is left to the “Secretary of State for Health”, i.e. the health minister. It does,
however, offer considerable guidance regarding its composition. Article 4(2) of Schedule 1
requires that the views of both men and women be “adequately represented.” As of this writing,
the HFEA consists of exactly nine women and nine men. Article 4(3) establishes that three
categories of individuals are not eligible for the positions of chairperson or deputy chairperson:
(a) medical practitioners, (b) individuals involved in “keeping or using gametes or embryos
outside the body,” and (c) individuals with an interest in the funding of research on keeping or
using gametes or embryos. The health minister must also ensure that medical and ART
practitioners (categories (a) and (b)) are represented by at least one person on the board. Finally
and most importantly, the health minister must ensure that at least one-third but less than half of
HFEA members represent the medical profession, the ART industry, and the research
community (categories (a), (b), and (c)).
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86
87
88
See Art. 25. The sixth edition of the code is available at http://www.hfea.gov.uk/HFEAPublications/CodeofPract
ice.
See Art. 31.
See http://www.hfea.gov.uk/AboutHFEA/OrganisationalStructure.
See Sections 9(1) – 9(6).
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