Doctor: Couples open to donating embryos

By Randolph E. Schmid, AP Science Writer | June 20, 2007
WASHINGTON --A majority of couples with stored embryos from fertility treatments say they would be willing to donate unused embryos for stem cell research, says a doctor who surveyed patients.

"Large numbers of infertility patients ... support using embryos for research, and these are people who have invested emotionally and financially in these embryos," Dr. Anne Drapkin Lyerly of Duke University said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

In other words, these are the very people that if circumstances were different, would be bathing, feeding and caring for these embryos as children.

But the circumstances aren't different.

...while there has been a very vigorous public debate on the issue, it has been dominated by lawmakers and religious authorities while the people "most personally and intimately involved have been underrepresented, if at all, so we wanted to bring their voices to the center."

The people who are most intimately and physically involved.

Of 1,020 people who responded by saying they still had embryos in storage, 49 percent said they were likely to donate some or all of them for research. When asked specifically about stem cell research, the portion willing to donate embryos rose to 62 percent.

"It suggests that people are more willing to pursue research when they know more about it and how it might benefit their fellow citizens," Lyerly said.

She added that research was preferred over donating the embryos to other infertile couples, "which brings into question the idea that the more you care about an embryo, the more you want it to become a child."

"This has significant implications for potential policy change on stem cell research," said Lyerly, an obstetrician-gynecologist and bioethicist. She noted that research donations could provide thousands of new stem cell lines for study.

Like anything else, the more you learn about the good that can come from it, the less you fear. God bless these couples who would be willing to donate these fertilized eggs to help other human beings.



What a jackass. If he was my bar hugging local drunk, I still wouldn't talk to him.

And by the way, no one ever asked permission to use MY tax dollars to kill innocents in Iraq & Afghanistan.
Just saying, Mr. Bush.