A conversation with Dr Anne McLaren, DBE, DPhil, FRS, FRCOG

Abstract

Anne McLaren is one of the world's foremost developmental biologists; a leader in elucidating the principles of early mammalian development whose research has underpinned advances in reproductive medicine and the treatment of infertility. After undergraduate and postgraduate studies at Oxford University and postdoctoral work in London, she was for 15 years at the Institute of Animal Genetics in Edinburgh followed by 18 years as Director of the MRC Mammalian Development Unit in London. She is currently a Group Leader at the Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute in Cambridge. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1975 and became the first woman to hold office in that Society – as Foreign Secretary, from 1991–1996. Dr McLaren played a pivotal role in the creation of the UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. She was a member of the Warnock Committee, served on the Voluntary (later Interim) Licensing Authority and was a key member of the HFEA from its establishment until the end of 2001. She chaired the Scientific and Technical Advisory Group of WHO's Human Reproduction Programme and is President of the Association of Women in Science and Engineering. She is a member of the European Group on Ethics that advises the European Commission on social and ethical implications of new technologies. In 2002, she was awarded (jointly with A. K. Tarkowski) the Japan Prize for Developmental Biology. She continues to have one of the sharpest minds in the business; for her, science has been not only a joy but an intellectual adventure of the highest order. She is interviewed here by Editorial Board Member Jane Denton.