IVF 'cell bank' plan criticised
By BBC News,
BBC News
| 10. 15. 2007
In theory, cells banked from one embryo could provide treatment for a sibling threatened by serious disease many decades later.
However, Lord Robert Winston said the scheme, unveiled at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine conference, preyed on parents' fears.
One stem cell expert said it was "too early" to justify storing the embryos.
Stem cells are the body's "master cells", capable of growing into a wide variety of different tissues, and many scientists believe that one day, they could be harnessed to fight diseases of old age such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.
One source of these is the human embryo, and most IVF cycles produce more embryos than can be implanted back into a woman, leaving unwanted embryos which are normally frozen for later use or discarded.
However, the science of stem cells is still at a fledgling stage, and stem cells derived from an embryo have never been successfully used to treat or cure human disease.
'Future investment'
The technique revealed at the conference involves harvesting and developing stem cells taken from frozen embryos.
California-based firm StemLifeLine claims...
Related Articles
By Emma McDonald Kennedy
| 09.25.2025
In the leadup to the 2024 election, Donald Trump repeatedly promised to make IVF more accessible. He made the commitment central to his campaign, even referring to himself as the “father of IVF.” In his first month in office, Trump issued an executive order promising to expand IVF access. The order set a 90-day deadline for policy recommendations for “lowering costs and reducing barriers to IVF,” although it didn’t make any substantive reproductive healthcare policy changes.
The response to the...
Sir Francis Galton, 1890s, by Eveleen Myers (née Tennant)
npg.org
Public Domain via Wikipedia
As has been discussed in recent issues of Biopolitical Times (1, 2), there are, increasingly, companies that claim to be selling parents better babies by selecting the “best” embryos. These services don’t come cheap – think $50,000, or even more, for embryo testing, plus perhaps as much again for IVF and concomitant services. To most of us, that is extremely expensive...
By Margaux MacColl, The San Francisco Standard | 09.17.2025
Designer babies are coming soon to an IVF clinic near you.
Nucleus Genomics, founded by Kian Sadeghi in 2020, when he was just 20, got its start analyzing genomes to weigh a person’s risk of everything from cancer to ADHD...
By Marianne Lamers, NEMO Kennislink [cites CGS' Katie Hasson] | 09.23.2025
Een rijtje gespreide vulva’s gaapt de bezoeker aan. Zó ziet een bevalling eruit, en zó een baarmoeder met foetus. Een zwangerschap, maar dan zonder zwangere vrouw, gestript van zorgen, gêne en pijn. De zwangerschapsmodellen en oefenbekkens, te zien in de...