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In Brief
All-party parliamentary group on Cancer is holding its 4th annual conference "Working together to improve cancer care", November 5 and 6 at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, Westminster. Contact Catriona Moore at cmoore@cancerbacup.org for further details.An influential crossbench peer has called on the government to end anonymity for sperm donors. In a reversal of her earlier views Baroness Warnock said that it was vital that children conceived by sperm donation should have access to such information as the genetic history of the father. Although experts have warned that such a move could possibly halve donations, Warnock said that the Scandinavian experience suggested that the initial impact of a change would eventually level off. The chair of the 1984 inquiry into human fertilisation, Warnock had originally called for the anonymity of donors - a recommendation which later became law in 1990.The Times has revealed that government efforts to cut waiting lists may fail unless "many surgeons are trained". The report revealed that many would-be surgeons could not progress any further because of too few higher training places. By 2010 England alone is expected to need 2,000 more consultant surgeons. The President of the Royal College of Surgeons, Sir Peter Morris, said that whilst many trainees were "desperate" to be surgeons "it can take them years to get a higher training slot, and some never do".A study commissioned by the british Medical Journal of 2,000 research studies into the possible link between the MMR vaccine and autism in children says it has proved the jab to be safe. The report went further, criticising the work of Dr Andrew Wakefield which started the controversy over the injection for being scientifically unsound. A Department of Health spokesman said: "We hope that parents are encouraged by these latest conclusions on the safety of this vaccine. MMR remains the best way to protect children against measles, mumps and rubella."
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