The number of infertility patients who plan to donate frozen embryos to stem cell research has grown, resulting in 2,000 to 3,000 new stem cell lines, according to a study out July 6th.
These startling findings contribute to the ongoing debate over stem cell research and who has legal authority of frozen embryos. “This is a significant controversy, the biggest we’ve ever had in science policy, over whether it is ethical to destroy human embryos in order to produce a stem cell line,” Ruth Faden, Ph.D., director of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and co-author of the study, told Ivanhoe. “What we now know from this study is that many of these patients, once they are finished with their reproductive plans, many of them want to donate those embryos that they will not be using for reproduction to medical research. They would rather do that than donate these embryos for adoption, or the other alternative which is merely to discard them.”
Researchers from Johns Hopkins University and Duke University surveyed more than 1,000 infertility couples. Sixty percent of the respondents said they were more likely to donate their remaining embryos to scientists for stem cell research than to other couples for adoption.
“Either way, if the embryo is donated for research or the embryo is discarded, the embryo dies and what these patients are showing us is that they would rather have the embryos used for medical research and in the process destroyed than just simply destroyed, or rather than donating the embryos for adoption by another couple,” Dr. Faden explained.
SOURCE: Ivanhoe interview with Ruth Faden, Ph.D., To be published in the July 6, 2007 issue of Science
