NHS Advisory Committee - lay member vacancy

Advisory committee on ethics to Birmingham Women's Fertility Centre - vacancy for lay member

Do you have an interest in ethical issues surrounding fertility treatment and its regulation?

Can you spare a couple of hours up to 4 times a year on a voluntary basis?

If so, we would be interested to hear from you.

Our Committee comprises 10 members, including a gynaecologist, a geneticist, a medical ethicist, a GP, and a patient with experience of assisted conception services, plus 5 other lay members unconnected with assisted conception.

We act essentially as a Clinical Ethics Committee rather than a Research Ethics Committee advising on issues in and around regulated fertility treatment, but also sometimes on non-regulated issues. We have extremely interesting and challenging discussions about ethical issues such as surrogacy, anonymity, pre-implantation and genetic diagnosis, age of parents, treating single parents, and discuss complex case referrals surrounding the welfare of a potential child resulting from assisted conception treatment, and the welfare of any existing children, and whether treatment should be offered or not. We also discuss responses to consultation documents from our regulatory body, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA).

Membership of the Committee is purely on a voluntary basis, however, we are able to cover travel expenses.

We are seeking expressions of interest from people from all backgrounds.

Anyone who is interested in the vacancy should contact:-

Dr Cyril Chapman
Chair of the Advisory Committee on Ethics
Birmingham Women’s Fertility Centre
Birmingham Women's NHS Foundation Trust
Birmingham Women's Hospital
Edgbaston
Birmingham, B15 2TG

Tel: 0121 623 6952
E-mail: cyril.chapman@bwhct.nhs.uk