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Tuesday, October 09, 2007 Human Therapeutic Cloning at a StandstillContinued from page 1 By Emily Singer
Similar regulations exist in California, and guidelines from both the National Academy of Sciences and the International Society for Stem Cell Research permit only limited compensation for egg donors. "Compensating egg donors was a very contentious issue for the International Stem Cell Society," says George Daley, president of the society and a scientist at Children's Hospital Boston, who is also attempting human therapeutic cloning. "We felt that paying the same market rate as ART was not acceptable, but we did agree on a token amount, in part to recognize the time, effort, and suffering." The United Kingdom has taken a different tack. Last year, the regulatory board that oversees embryonic stem-cell research in the United Kingdom approved an "egg sharing" program, something that some scientists and ethicists want to see adopted in the United States. Women who plan to undergo in vitro fertilization (IVF) agree to donate to research any excess eggs gathered during the procedure in exchange for subsidized medical costs. "I favor it because it grants access to IVF to the poor, who have traditionally not had access to expensive IVF procedures," says Laurie Zoloth, director of the Center for Bioethics, Science and Society at Northwestern University, in Chicago. She adds that this eliminates one of the major ethical objections to egg donation: that women will put themselves at risk for no personal benefit or will feel coerced to donate eggs because they need money. "In this case, people would be doing it for personal reasons," says Zoloth. Eggan says that he was looking into trying a similar approach at Harvard but was advised that state laws prohibit it. In the meantime, scientists are exploring various alternatives, including the use of animal eggs in place of human ones. (See "Human-Animal Cybrids.") |
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How Important Is the Latest Cloning Feat?
01/18/2008
Comments
siena on 10/09/2007 at 11:21 PM
1
evanlec on 12/29/2007 at 3:20 AM
1
Is there shame in that? To be honest, I believe there should never be shame, nor should there ever have been for it.
Is one murder, and the other is not? How long will we try to debate this?
We've outlawed late-term abortion; what about early term? Whats the difference?
It's ridiculous in my opinion. And since no one could possibly agree on what exact stage of fertilization an abortion is performed upon is considered murder...
Why would an individual decide that forcing a young woman into years of fatherless child raising would be more helpful than preventing such horrible diseases as alzhiemers?
We all have a difference of opinion, perhaps because I am a male I do not understand the profound effect of losing an egg has upon the psyche.
Then again I probably lose thousands of sperm per week; do I miss them? not a bit.
filipoff on 10/12/2007 at 10:30 AM
1
cretin001 on 10/14/2007 at 10:42 PM
35