We've blogged several times about issues with the donation of eggs before, but this week the NY Times has an unusual editorial about a possibly 'elegant solution to the vexing egg donor problem.':
"Stem cell research in the United States has been hobbled for years by severe and misguided restrictions on federal funding. But now a vexing additional problem is slowing even privately financed research. There are distressingly few women willing to donate their eggs for experiments at the frontiers of this promising science..."
To read the rest, click here.
Monday, September 24, 2007
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2 comments:
Wesley J. Smith asks
"What are we to make of this? On one hand, the cybrid story may never amount to much. Given the tremendous difficulties in creating cloned embryos using human eggs, it would seem highly unlikely that cybrid embryos will prove any easier to manufacture. Moreover, even though the animal essence in each resulting stem cell would amount to less than one percent, this foreign substance could be enough to prevent proper embryonic development and/or the safe use of cybrid stem cells in human patients.
On the other hand, the approval by British regulators for creating manimal embryos—and the widespread support for the decision among the American media elite and biotechnology sector--illustrates the growing recklessness and hubris among the scientific establishment. Unwilling to pause long enough for society to ethically grapple with the awesome powers they are assuming, refusing to accept any meaningful ethical limits, presuming that because they think they can do something that they should go right out and do it, advocates for cloning and ESCR have demonstrated that they have no intention in engaging in self restraint. It is as if they have drained all the brake fluid from the bus and we now are careering toward the precipice with seemingly no way to stop."
More can be read at the CBC site:
http://www.cbc-network.org/enewsletter/index_9_26_07.htm
Apparently, the majority of our readers think that the brakes should be put on, too, according to our poll.
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