Spring Break
Storing leftover embryos stir scientific, religious dilemma
Leanne Larmondin/Religion News Service
Issue date: 6/14/09 Section: Divine Intervention
The woman across the table told Dr. Jeanne Loring she was on the horns of a dilemma: feed and clothe her existing family, or continue to pay to keep frozen her embryos from an earlier fertility treatment. The woman, a hairdresser who was married to a mechanic, had one child and then triplets - all born after successful in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments.
"I can't afford to keep the remaining embryos frozen,'' the woman told Loring over lunch. "I can't afford to feed the family I have.''
The question of what to do with excess (or unused) embryos is a vexing one for parents who have completed their families. Those frozen embryos - currently estimated at about half a million in the U.S. - are typically discarded, given to researchers for stem cell research or "adopted" by other couples.
Yet for some families, none of those options is attractive. Some, like the woman Loring encountered, simply can't afford the $300-$600 annual fee to keep the embryos stored at -320 degrees Fahrenheit. Others have moral qualms about handing over potential human life to science, or entrusting their genetic offspring to total strangers.
Loring, the director of human embryonic stem cell research at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., didn't need more embryos for her research, and ethics rules precluded her from encouraging a donation to science. The woman felt badly about destroying the embryos by discarding them. All Loring could recommend was donating the embryos for possible implantation in another woman's womb.
Although she doesn't know what the woman ultimately decided, the incident stayed with Loring. She's already established a storage bank for those wishing to donate embryos for scientific research, and now, Loring would like to help establish a different kind of bank for frozen embryos.
That bank might retain the embryos indefinitely or perhaps have an adoption component, though she wonders how effective that option really is. ''There are not enough uteruses to accommodate even the embryos that are (already) frozen,'' she said.
"I can't afford to keep the remaining embryos frozen,'' the woman told Loring over lunch. "I can't afford to feed the family I have.''
The question of what to do with excess (or unused) embryos is a vexing one for parents who have completed their families. Those frozen embryos - currently estimated at about half a million in the U.S. - are typically discarded, given to researchers for stem cell research or "adopted" by other couples.
Yet for some families, none of those options is attractive. Some, like the woman Loring encountered, simply can't afford the $300-$600 annual fee to keep the embryos stored at -320 degrees Fahrenheit. Others have moral qualms about handing over potential human life to science, or entrusting their genetic offspring to total strangers.
Loring, the director of human embryonic stem cell research at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., didn't need more embryos for her research, and ethics rules precluded her from encouraging a donation to science. The woman felt badly about destroying the embryos by discarding them. All Loring could recommend was donating the embryos for possible implantation in another woman's womb.
Although she doesn't know what the woman ultimately decided, the incident stayed with Loring. She's already established a storage bank for those wishing to donate embryos for scientific research, and now, Loring would like to help establish a different kind of bank for frozen embryos.
That bank might retain the embryos indefinitely or perhaps have an adoption component, though she wonders how effective that option really is. ''There are not enough uteruses to accommodate even the embryos that are (already) frozen,'' she said.
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