According to this April 18 article in The Washington Post, the Obama administration on Friday issued compromise rules on federally-funded embryonic stem cell research. The rules would limit research, paid for by taxpayers, to using “excess” embryos voluntarily donated by their parents/owners and offered without remuneration. These embryos are now cryogenically stored in IVF and similar facilities.
And yet, attorney and bioethicist Wesley J. Smith speculates that while the 2009 NIH Guidelines for Stem Cell Research may prohibit human cloning for now, that could change in the next few years. Says Smith,
. . . as I have reported at SHS previously, the political campaign has begun to destroy the Dickey Amendment. Should that happen, it would be legal for the Feds to fund human cloning, the making of embryos for research, and just about anything “the scientists” wanted to do in this regard. Once that happened, the NIH would likely revise these guidelines to permit funding for those activities.
I think Mr. Smith is right. According to a report issued by the the RAND Corporation, there are about 400,000 frozen embryos. Of those, only 2.8 percent (or 11,000) have been designated for research. Says RAND,
Although the 11,000 embryos designated for research might seem like a large number, the actual number of embryos that might be converted into stem cell lines is likely to be substantially lower. Because assisted reproductive technology clinics generally transfer the best-quality embryos to the patient during treatment cycles, the remaining embryos available to be frozen are not always of the highest quality. (High-quality embryos are those that grow at normal rates.) In addition, some of the frozen embryos have been in storage for many years, and at the time that some of those embryos were created, laboratory cultures were not as conducive to preserving embryos as they are today. Some embryos would also be lost in the freeze-and-thaw process itself.
RAND believes that only 275 embryonic stem cell lines can be created from available and viable frozen embryos. “Even this number is probably an overestimate,” the report notes.
Thus, it appears we’re already stimulating demand in order to necessitate supply. If the Dickey amendment is not renewed next year, it will only take the signature of our Commander in Chief on a new bill permitting federal funds to be used to create, and kill, human clones.
