Spring Break
Storing leftover embryos stir scientific, religious dilemma
Leanne Larmondin/Religion News Service
Issue date: 6/14/09 Section: Divine Intervention
The main purpose of her embryo bank would be to relieve the responsibility - financial, moral and otherwise - from parents who feel they face no good options. And if religious groups feel so strongly about the fate of unused embryos, she said, perhaps they can help foot the bill.
Supporting or providing adoption opportunities ''is the role of religion,'' said Loring, who said she is not particularly religious. ''I don't think it is the role of a scientist.''
The fate of unused embryos has taken on new resonance after President Obama lifted an eight-year ban on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. Obama has said embryos cannot be created solely for research, but most experts expect researchers to secure embryos from leftover IVF treatments.
In a typical IVF treatment, hormones help a woman stimulate her production of eggs, which are then fertilized with sperm to create an embryo. Doctors select the healthiest embryos for implantation. The rest are typically kept on ice.
Numbers vary, but some couples are left with as many as 12 to 14 remaining embryos. Many observers, including the Roman Catholic Church and some evangelical groups, believe the fertility industry is too profit-driven and should not be creating so many extra embryos in the first place.
A 2002 study of 430 fertility clinics by the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization, found that nearly 400,000 embryos had been frozen and stored since the late 1970s. Today, that number is estimated at 500,000 and growing.
Some groups, like Colorado-based Focus on the Family, consider embryonic stem cell research tantamount to taking nascent human life and advocate instead for embryo adoption.
Carrie Gordon Earll, a bioethics analyst with Focus on the Family, said many couples who had completed their families through IVF had not fully ``connected the dots'' that the procedure could leave them with both leftover embryos and a moral dilemma.
''It dawned on us that what you have with frozen embryos is the opportunity for early adoption,'' Earll said. ``We are rescuing an adoptable child.''
Supporting or providing adoption opportunities ''is the role of religion,'' said Loring, who said she is not particularly religious. ''I don't think it is the role of a scientist.''
The fate of unused embryos has taken on new resonance after President Obama lifted an eight-year ban on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. Obama has said embryos cannot be created solely for research, but most experts expect researchers to secure embryos from leftover IVF treatments.
In a typical IVF treatment, hormones help a woman stimulate her production of eggs, which are then fertilized with sperm to create an embryo. Doctors select the healthiest embryos for implantation. The rest are typically kept on ice.
Numbers vary, but some couples are left with as many as 12 to 14 remaining embryos. Many observers, including the Roman Catholic Church and some evangelical groups, believe the fertility industry is too profit-driven and should not be creating so many extra embryos in the first place.
A 2002 study of 430 fertility clinics by the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization, found that nearly 400,000 embryos had been frozen and stored since the late 1970s. Today, that number is estimated at 500,000 and growing.
Some groups, like Colorado-based Focus on the Family, consider embryonic stem cell research tantamount to taking nascent human life and advocate instead for embryo adoption.
Carrie Gordon Earll, a bioethics analyst with Focus on the Family, said many couples who had completed their families through IVF had not fully ``connected the dots'' that the procedure could leave them with both leftover embryos and a moral dilemma.
''It dawned on us that what you have with frozen embryos is the opportunity for early adoption,'' Earll said. ``We are rescuing an adoptable child.''
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