1973 to 1978

The Del Zios: an experiment stopped

Doris Del Zio's fallopian tubes were blocked, and repeated surgery had failed to open them. On 12 September 1973, in New York, her gynaecologist William Sweeney collected eggs from her and sent them to Landrum Shettles at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. Shettles, who had claimed in the 1950s to have fertilised human eggs in a dish, mixed them with her husband John's sperm and set them to incubate, meaning to put an embryo back into her womb.

Colleagues found out. The chairman of Shettles's department, Raymond Vande Wiele, had the culture brought to his office and took out its stopper, which ended the experiment.

The Del Zios sued for 1.5 million dollars. Their case came to trial in New York in the summer of 1978, in the same weeks that Louise Brown was born in England. The jury awarded Doris Del Zio 50,000 dollars for her suffering, and her husband 3 dollars. Shettles left Columbia. In Martin Johnson's words, the affair led to "a lengthy court case and much negative publicity".

The question. Who decides whether an experiment on a human egg or embryo may go ahead: the doctor, the patient, or the hospital?

1985

Baby Cotton: a baby for a fee

On 4 January 1985 a baby girl was born in London to Kim Cotton, who had agreed through an American agency to carry a child for a couple from abroad. She was paid £6,500. The baby was made a ward of court before she could leave hospital.

On 11 January Mr Justice Latey gave care of the child to the couple who had commissioned her. The way she was conceived, he said, did not decide the case: her welfare came first, and they could give her a good home.

Parliament moved within months. The Surrogacy Arrangements Act 1985, which received Royal Assent on 16 July, made it an offence to arrange surrogacy for profit. Surrogacy itself stayed lawful, and still is in the United Kingdom, so long as no one makes a business of it.

The question. Can a woman be paid to carry a child for someone else?

1987

A grandmother gives birth

In Johannesburg in 1987, Pat Anthony, then in her late forties, carried embryos made by IVF from her daughter's eggs and her son-in-law's sperm. Her daughter had lost her womb. On 1 October 1987 Mrs Anthony gave birth to triplets, and the press called her the first woman to bear her own grandchildren.

The law had not imagined it. Under South African law at the time the woman who gave birth was the mother, so her daughter and son-in-law had to adopt their own genetic children.

The question. Who is the mother: the woman who gives the egg, or the woman who gives birth?

1997

Diane Blood: consent after death

In 1995 Stephen Blood fell into a coma with meningitis. Before he died, doctors took sperm from him at his wife's request. Stephen and Diane had been trying for a child, but he had never given written consent, as the 1990 Act required for storing and using sperm.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority refused to let her be treated, and in October 1996 the High Court agreed. On 6 February 1997 the Court of Appeal held that the sperm should not have been stored without written consent. But European law gave her the right to be treated in another member state, and the Authority had to think again. It allowed the sperm to go to Belgium. Her sons Liam and Joel were born in 1998 and 2002.

Then came a second fight, to name Stephen on their birth certificates. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology (Deceased Fathers) Act 2003, which received Royal Assent on 18 September 2003, let a father who had died be named, if he had agreed in writing. The naming is symbolic: it gives him no legal status as a parent.

The question. What does a person's consent mean when they can no longer give it?

2001 to 2005

The Hashmis: a sibling to save a son

Zain Hashmi had beta thalassaemia, a blood disorder that a matched stem cell transplant could cure. No one in his family was a match. His parents, Raj and Shahana Hashmi, asked to have their embryos tested both for thalassaemia and for tissue type, so that a new baby could be born free of the disease and able to give Zain cord blood.

The Authority agreed in principle in late 2001 and granted a licence in February 2002. The campaign group Comment on Reproductive Ethics went to court to stop it. The High Court quashed the licence in December 2002. The Court of Appeal restored it in May 2003, and on 28 April 2005 the House of Lords agreed, unanimously, that the Authority had the power to allow it.

The question. May an embryo be chosen to help someone else?

2002 to 2004

The Whitakers: going abroad

Charlie Whitaker had Diamond-Blackfan anaemia. Unlike Zain Hashmi's illness, it could not be tested for in the embryo, so tissue typing would only help Charlie and would do nothing for the embryo itself. In 2002 the Authority said no.

Michelle and Jayson Whitaker went to Chicago for treatment, and their son Jamie was born in June 2003. In July 2004 the Authority changed its policy and allowed tissue typing even where the embryo was not itself at risk.

The question. If one country says no and another says yes, what is a rule worth?

2003 and 2008

A boy or a girl?

Choosing an embryo's sex to avoid a disease carried on the X chromosome had been allowed for years. Choosing it for any other reason was another matter. In November 2003 the Authority published its report Sex selection: options for regulation, after a public consultation, and recommended that sex selection for non-medical reasons should not be allowed, by any method.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 wrote that ban into law.

The question. Is choosing a child's sex a private choice, or a matter for everyone?

1981 to 1997

Cloning: the impossible, and then Dolly

In 1981 Karl Illmensee and Peter Hoppe reported mice cloned by moving nuclei from early embryos into fertilised eggs. Others could not repeat it. In 1984 James McGrath and Davor Solter, after their own careful attempts, concluded that cloning a mammal by simple nuclear transfer was probably biologically impossible.

On 5 July 1996, at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh, a lamb was born from a nucleus taken from an adult sheep's udder cell. Dolly was announced in February 1997 and described in Nature on 27 February. She lived until 14 February 2003. Laws against human reproductive cloning followed in many countries, including the United Kingdom in 2001.

The question. Just because it can be done, should it?

1998 to 2006

Stem cells: hope, fraud, and a way round

In 1998 James Thomson's team in Wisconsin grew human embryonic stem cells, using embryos left over from IVF and given for research. The cells could in principle become any tissue, and the embryos were destroyed to obtain them. IVF had made the debate possible.

In 2004 and 2005 Hwang Woo-suk's team in Seoul reported human stem cells made by cloning. In January 2006 a Seoul National University investigation found the work fabricated, and Science retracted both papers.

In August 2006 Kazutoshi Takahashi and Shinya Yamanaka showed that four genes could turn ordinary mouse skin cells back into cells much like embryonic stem cells, without an embryo at all. Yamanaka shared the Nobel Prize in 2012 with John Gurdon.

The question. Can good ends justify using embryos, and who checks the science?

2008

L v HFEA: the same question, again

Eleven years after Diane Blood, another widow, whose husband had died suddenly in 2007, asked to use sperm taken from him at the time of his death. Again there was no written consent. On 3 October 2008 Mr Justice Charles held that the sperm could not lawfully be stored or used in the United Kingdom. Whether it could go abroad was left to the Authority to decide.

The court kept her name private, and the museum does too.

The question. Should the law bend for one person's grief?

2008

A new Act for a new century

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 received Royal Assent on 13 November 2008. It brought the 1990 Act up to date with what the cases above had shown.

It allowed research on embryos combining human and animal material. It banned sex selection for non-medical reasons. It allowed embryos to be chosen to help a sick brother or sister, though not to provide a whole organ. It replaced the duty to consider a child's “need for a father” with the need for “supportive parenting”. It allowed a woman's female partner to be the child's second legal parent, and unmarried couples and civil partners to apply for a parental order after surrogacy.

The question. How should the law keep up with the laboratory?