Regulation before the HFEA

As a result of the birth of Louise Brown, the Government, in 1982 set up the committee of Inquiry into Human Fertilisation and Embryology (The Warnock Committee). This committee made a number of recommendations including one that recommended the setting up of a body to regulate these procedures. The Medical Research Council and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in the interim set up a voluntary body to regulate the centres doing IVF. This was called the Voluntary Licensing Authority (VLA) for Human in-vitro Fertilisation and Embryology. Centres were visited and licensed. This body regulated the centres until the statutory body the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) was formed in 1990.