Bioethicists deplore relaxation of limit on human embryo research

Bioethicists deplore relaxation of limit on human embryo research

Bioethicists criticised June 3 the relaxation of a 14-day limit on human embryo experimentation.

In a statement, the Anscombe Bioethics Centre in Oxford, England, lamented the decision by the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) to lift the limit on lab-grown embryo experimentation.

“Once the 14-day rule falls away, the only real limit, it seems, to experimentation would be the scientific limit as to how long embryonic or foetal human beings can be sustained outside the womb – or, indeed, in an artificial womb (ectogenesis),” said the centre’s director David Albert Jones.

The ISSCR, an independent non-profit organization based in Skokie, Illinois, announced on May 26 that it was relaxing the decades-old rule due to rapid advances in the field.

Mr Jones said that the ISSCR Guidelines for Stem Cell Research and Clinical Translation place no time limit on culturing human embryos.

“These new proposals constitute a rule on embryo experimentation that is, in effect, a shifting goalpost,” he wrote.

The ISSCR’s 2016 guidelines prohibited experiments on human embryos “beyond 14 days or formation of the primitive streak, whichever occurs first”.

The new guidelines call for “public conversations touching on the scientific significance as well as the societal and ethical issues raised by allowing” experiments beyond 14 days.