Spare Embryos

IN OUR ONGOING NATIONAL DEBATE about the use of human embryonic stem cells for research, there is one compromise position that reappears with regularity and attracts relatively wide support. This position proscribes (at least for federal funding) any research on stem cells derived from embryos produced solely for research purposes, while permitting research on stem cells derived from embryos that were produced but are no longer needed for use in infertility treatments. (I am not here referring to a different sort of compromise struck by President Bush in his speech of August 2001. He permitted funding for research on embryonic stem cell lines only if the evil deed of embryo destruction had already been done but not for cell lines derived from embryos destroyed in the future--thereby seeking to permit some research to go forward without providing an incentive for further destruction of embryos.) Because spare embryos are destined to be discarded in any case--because, that is, the decision of those with legal authority over the embryos has been to discard them--they have no future life prospects. They are destined to die, and the only question is how. Why not, one might wonder, gain some useful knowledge from their dying?

This compromise approach is not without appeal, and it has a distinguished pedigree. It was, for example, specifically endorsed by the National Bioethics Advisory Commission in its 1999 report on "Ethical Issues in Human Stem Cell Research." The commission recommended that research on stem cells derived from spare embryos remaining after infertility treatments be eligible for federal funding but that, at least for the present, such funding not be permitted for research on stem cells derived from embryos that had been produced solely for research purposes.