Speaker: Catherine Mills

In March 2022, the Australian Parliament passed a bill allowing for a clinical trial of the assisted reproductive technology, [[mitochondrial donation]], to be undertaken. This makes Australia the second country in the world to legislate to allow this technology to proceed, after the UK. Subsequently, the MitoHOPE program, run by Monash University, received funding to proceed with the aim of establishing the safety, efficiency and efficacy of the technology to support future clinical application. In this presentation, I discuss my involvement in MitoHOPE as an example of applied philosophical research with demonstrable impact. In the course of this, I explain what the technology involves, why it is legislatively significant, and outline some of the claims made in the process of its legalisation in Australia and the UK. Then I identify and discuss some of the key ethical and regulatory challenges that mitochondrial donation raises, particularly the ethics of high risk assisted reproduction, access to third-party reproductive materials such as human eggs, and the future of inheritable changes to the human genome.

Please note that these seminars are open to the public and in person only.