Thursday, July 12, 2001

American scientists have defiantly stepped onto a brand new ethical ledge, creating more than 100 human embryos for the sole purpose of using them in a medical experiment.

The research project, conducted over the past two years at a private fertility clinic in Norfolk, Va., harvested stem cells from human embryos that were never intended to grow into children. Instead, they were deliberately produced as material for scientific investigation.

With a debate raging in the United States over the use of embryonic stem cells, the work exposes yet another issue for President George W. Bush to grapple with as he decides whether to fund, or even allow, government-supported scientists to continue work in this hot medical field.

In Canada, draft legislation now before a federal standing committee would prohibit anyone in this country from creating human embryos that would be destroyed for research.
For the moment, however, the issue remains in legal limbo.

The Virginia experiment, which relied on 12 women who were each paid $2,000 (U.S.) and two men who each received $50 to donate their eggs and sperm for the research, has drawn quick condemnation from those who believe life begins at conception. It has also earned disapproval from ethicists trying to forge common ground.

On one hand, stem cells -- which can grow into any type of tissue in the body -- could revolutionize medicine with new treatments and cures for a wide range of diseases. On the other hand, the best-known source of stem cells to date comes from human embryos that are destroyed in the process of collecting them.

Usually, they are drawn from frozen embryos that are left over after couples struggling to conceive have eggs fertilized in a test tube, a procedure known as in-vitro fertilization.

Scientists and many ethicists feel this method is acceptable because surplus embryos are otherwise discarded.

"With so many other embryos available, it's hard to understand why they would do this [create the embryos]. It's almost like these scientists have drawn a line in the sand," said Patricia Baird, the professor of medical ethics and genetics at the University of British Columbia, who headed Canada's 1993 Commission on Reproductive Technologies.

But scientists at the Jones Institute of Reproductive Medicine report in this month's journal of Fertility and Sterility that their method is "more ethical."

Lead author Susan Lanzendorf and five of her colleagues make the case that there is an even higher standard of informed consent when people contribute their sperm and eggs knowing they will be used to create an embryo that will be used solely for research purposes.

Jane Gardner, a spokeswoman for the Jones Institute, which engineered the conception of North America's first test-tube baby in 1981, said couples who donate surplus embryos actually underwent the IVF process to conceive a child. "This is the purest form of informed consent; these are people who knew from the beginning," Ms. Gardner said.

The donors, she added, all underwent psychological screening and signed off on the project.

But Mary Ellen Douglas, a national organizer with the anti-abortion group known as the Campaign Life Coalition, said: "This is perverted science . . . the appalling view of scientists that they can 'create' human beings and use human beings for experiments is exactly that -- appalling."

Ms. Douglas said scientists should confine themselves to research where stem cells are harvested from adult tissue -- such as muscle or placenta.

The Jones Institute researchers, who are also affiliated with the Eastern Virginia School of Medicine, collected a total of 162 mature human eggs from the 12 women; 110 were successfully fertilized and 40 of those developed to the blastocyst stage, which is a point in development before cells can differentiate and grow into various organs and tissues. Of these, the scientists were able to grow three different stem-cell lines.

The feat itself is not a scientific advance. Researchers first harvested and grew stem-cell lines in 1998 using frozen embryos. But the Virginia team points out the new method also offers technical advantages: Scientists can harvest stem cells from younger egg donors and grow stem cells within days of the eggs actually being fertilized.

Based on consultations with "members of the clergy, ethicists, and law professionals," the researchers wrote, "the Jones Institute Ethics Committee agreed that the creation of embryos for research purposes was justifiable and that it was our duty to provide humankind with the best understanding of early human development."

Roger Pierson, past president of the Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society and director of the Reproductive Biology Research Institute at the University of Saskatchewan, said the use of fresh rather than frozen embryos does have obvious advantages.

"Any time anything is frozen, there are crystals forming in the cells . . . that can damage the cell or its function," Dr. Pierson said.

He also said he was not surprised to hear that researchers would actually run the ethical risks associated with creating embryos to harvest stem cells.

"We're looking at tissues that hold keys to how we become human," said Dr. Pierson. "This is research and technology that has the potential to obviate disease."

But Dr. Baird said, "If the embryos can be thawed and create a new person," stem cells from frozen embryos would also be of high quality.

"There is no need to do this," she said.

Since 1996, the U.S. government has not funded any federal research that would damage or destroy a human embryo. Under former U.S. president Bill Clinton, government-funded scientists were allowed only to conduct research on embryonic stem cells that they themselves did not harvest, or, in other words, did not destroy.

As a result, Dr. Baird pointed out that much of the research into embryonic stem cells has been driven into the private sector where "you've no idea of what's going on."