Made-to-Order Embryos for Sale — A Brave New World?
By I. Glenn Cohen and Eli Y. Adashi,
The New England Journal of Medicine
| 04. 10. 2013
[For original article with footnotes, see here]
Embryo donation (also known as embryo adoption) is the compassionate gifting of residual cryopreserved embryos by consenting parents to infertile recipients. At present, only a limited number of such transactions occur. In 2010, the last year for which U.S. data were available, fewer than 1000 embryo donations were recorded. These acts of giving, unencumbered by federal law, are being guided by a limited number of state laws. Moreover, the practice is sanctioned by professional societies, such as the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, subject to the provision that “the selling of embryos per se is ethically unacceptable.”1 As such, the not-for-profit donation of existing embryos by consenting parents comports with a triad of commonly held ethical attributes. First, donated embryos are not sold for profit. Second, donated embryos are (by original intent) generated for self-use. Third, donated embryos are the product of an unambiguous parental unit and as such are transferable. All told, embryo donation constitutes an established if limited component of present-day assisted reproduction.
Embryo Banks
The proliferation of commercial gamete...
Related Articles
By Ian Sample, The Guardian | 03.08.2024
Scientists are a step closer to making IVF eggs from patients’ skin cells after adapting the procedure that created Dolly the sheep, the first cloned mammal, more than two decades ago.
The work raises the prospect of older women being...
By Gerry Smith, Bloomberg | 03.12.2024
When Celenise Mahmood first learned about two new gene therapies that could cure sickle cell disease, she felt a wave of relief.
Her 9-year-old son, Navid, has the inherited blood disorder. By age 5, he’d had over 30 life-saving blood...
By Liz Baker, Debbie Elliott, and Susanna Capelouto, NPR | 03.06.2024
The Alabama State Legislature passed a bill Wednesday night granting civil and criminal immunity for in vitro fertilization service providers and receivers.
Republican Governor Kay Ivey signed the bill into law within an hour of it passing the Alabama...
By Daniel Gilbert, The Washington Post | 03.07.2024
Vitaly Kushnir’s fertility clinic offers to screen an embryo to predict a baby’s sex, but the service can lead to ethically murky territory, like when a couple wanted it so their first child could be a boy.
But the couple...