Peter Braude is Head of the Department of Women’s Health at King’s College London. He directs the Centre for Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis at Guy’s and St Thomas Hospital, which is the most active and successful of the HFEA licensed programmes in the UK. Whilst in Cambridge he lead one of the first groups to be funded by the UK Medical Research Council to carry out research using human embryos fertilised in vitro, towards an understanding of the cellular and molecular mechanisms operating at these early stages of development. His group at King’s is funded by the MRC, established the first human embryonic stem cell lines in the UK, and the first internationally to contain the common ∆F508 deletion for cystic fibrosis now lodged with the UK Stem Cell Bank. He has published widely on the science and ethics of these emerging techniques. He was a former member of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, and chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. He currently sits on the committee for the Safety of Blood, Tissues and Organs.