With approximately half a million embryos left over from in vitro fertilization now frozen and stored in fertility clinics, the question of what to do with them has become a big issue. Most of them will be discarded, donated for scientific research, or given to other couples. (For patients who can’t conceive using their own eggs, using pre-existing embryos is more cost-effective than an egg donor, researchers say.)
For some couples, however, none of those three options feel right—yet they can’t afford the hundreds of dollars a year its costs to store the embryos—so they’re left with a moral dilemma.
Jeanne Loring, director of the Center for Regenerative Medicine at The Scripps Research Institute in California, thinks she has the answer. She wants to create an embryo bank that would take responsibility for these embryos. And perhaps religious groups that feel strongly about what happens to extra embryos can help cover the costs, she says. These groups, she tells the Religion News Service, “are against using embryos for research but … they are not offering another solution.” —Heather Wax

The Hastings Center and Yale University recently formed a joint ethics-and-health-policy program. The Yale-Hastings Program in Ethics and Health Policy will allow Yale faculty and Hastings scholars to share resources, host visiting scholars, and jointly sponsor student programs that deepen the understanding of bioethical issues.
The Hastings Center bills itself as the world’s first bioethics research institute. Its research program looks at the effects of advances in medicine and the life sciences. Yale’s Interdisciplinary Bioethics Center explores the ethical and social implications of biomedical and technological research, with a focus on religion and the environment.
The new program will hold its first public event this spring. — Kimberly Roots

It looks like voters in Michigan have passed a ballot measure that will loosen the state’s restrictions on embryonic stem cell research. Proposal 2 would amend the state constitution so that infertility patients in Michigan could donate their extra embryos for stem cell research, provided that the embryos would otherwise be discarded.
Deriving stem cell lines from embryos (which destroys the embryo) is legal under federal law, but a state law in Michigan prohibited the destruction of embryos in most cases. According to the University of Michigan, the state was one of the most restrictive in the country with regard to embryonic stem cell research.
The amendment will take effect on December 19. —Heather Wax

Most infertility patients would let their extra embryos be used for stem cell research, according to a recent survey published in this month’s issue of the journal Fertility and Sterility. When they were asked if using leftover embryos for stem cell research should be allowed, 73 percent of those who gave a definitive opinion said yes, though blacks and Hispanics were less likely to approve the practice than were whites. Patients under 30, Protestants, those who were less wealthy, and those who were single were also less likely to support using the leftover embryos.
The patients were also asked if they would sell their extra embryos to other couples—something that both the American Society for Reproductive Medicine and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists consider ethically unacceptable. (For patients who can’t conceive using their own eggs, it’s more cost-effective to try using pre-existing embryos than an egg donor, according to the researchers.) When asked if selling their extra embryos to other couples should be allowed, 56 percent of those who gave a definitive opinion said yes.
These patients are the gatekeepers of the hundreds of thousands of embryos left over from in vitro fertilization that are now frozen and stored in fertility clinics, the researchers point out. “Infertility patients, in general, are altruistic,” says Dr. Tarun Jain, clinical IVF director at the University of Illinois at Chicago and lead author of the study, “and it makes sense that they would try to advance medicine and help others.” —Heather Wax