Made-to-Order Embryos for Sale — A Brave New World?
By I. Glenn Cohen and Eli Y. Adashi,
The New England Journal of Medicine
| 04. 10. 2013
[For original article with footnotes, see here]
Embryo donation (also known as embryo adoption) is the compassionate gifting of residual cryopreserved embryos by consenting parents to infertile recipients. At present, only a limited number of such transactions occur. In 2010, the last year for which U.S. data were available, fewer than 1000 embryo donations were recorded. These acts of giving, unencumbered by federal law, are being guided by a limited number of state laws. Moreover, the practice is sanctioned by professional societies, such as the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, subject to the provision that “the selling of embryos per se is ethically unacceptable.”1 As such, the not-for-profit donation of existing embryos by consenting parents comports with a triad of commonly held ethical attributes. First, donated embryos are not sold for profit. Second, donated embryos are (by original intent) generated for self-use. Third, donated embryos are the product of an unambiguous parental unit and as such are transferable. All told, embryo donation constitutes an established if limited component of present-day assisted reproduction.
Embryo Banks
The proliferation of commercial gamete...
Related Articles
By Ryan Cross, Endpoints News | 08.19.2025
Human eggs are incredibly rare cells. The ovary typically produces only 400 mature eggs across a woman’s life. But biologists in George Church’s lab at Harvard University — a group that’s never content with nature’s limits — just got a...
By Riley Beggin and Jeff Stein, The Washington Post | 08.03.2025
The White House does not plan to require health insurers to provide coverage for in vitro fertilization services, two people with knowledge of internal discussions said, even though the idea was one of President Donald Trump’s key campaign pledges.
Last...
By Harry Hunter, PET BioNews | 08.11.2025
The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology has announced plans to publish a POSTnote and called for submissions on surrogacy law in the UK and internationally.
The current UK surrogacy laws, largely based on legislation from the 1980s, have been...
By Staff, National Women's Law Center | 08.13.2025
INTRODUCTION
Baby bonuses. Motherhood medals. Fertility tracking. You may have heard of these policy proposals as solutions from the Trump administration to help encourage women to have more children.
Besides falling short of ensuring that people have what they need...