While the UK’s fertility watchdog, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority is in danger of tossed onto the bonfire of the quangos, across the Channel in France, opposition is mounting to creating a government agency with similar powers.

Six deputies in the national parliament have signed an open letter calling for a “citizen’s bioethics”, “une bioéthique citoyenne". They claim that too much power has already been given to the government’s biomedical agency. This should be rethought as parliament deliberates over a new bioethics law.

"Bioethics is everybody's business,” they write. “Behind apparently complex debates, the most intimate aspects of the life of every French citizen are at stake: parenting, fertility or even the fight against serious diseases…

"We solemnly ask that during the upcoming revision of bioethics laws the Parliament be confirmed in its duty to control a priori decisions of the biomedical agency and be associated with the development of regulations.” Parliament, they argue, should not surrender its prerogatives in bioethics “so that the French are not dispossessed of their conscience. Law, morality and progress are compatible". ~ Le Figaro, Nov 3