The next debate on embryo science
By Editorial,
Nature Biotechnology
| 08. 02. 2021
The International Society for Stem Cell Research has called for broad public dialogue on the ethics of human embryo research beyond 14 days post-fertilization. National jurisdictions should seize the moment.
A longstanding prohibition against culturing human embryos for more than 14 days is now open for discussion, according to revised research guidelines released in May by the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR). The society’s change in position was prompted by recent advances in embryo culture methods that promise to deepen understanding of human development at the stage when the embryo implants in the uterus—knowledge that may lead to new therapies for infertility and miscarriage. The ISSCR is to be commended for encouraging ethical reflection on extending the 14-day rule before the world is caught off guard by an embryo experiment that goes beyond the accepted time frame. It is now up to interested parties in national scientific, political, ethics and religious communities to take up the ISSCR’s challenge.
In 1978, the birth of the first baby created through in vitro fertilization (IVF) was met with a storm of controversy. IVF provoked deep concerns and anxieties about the wisdom of tampering with the natural order of reproduction. Once human procreation was unlinked from coitus, impossible things became possible: women...
Related Articles
By Megan Molteni and Anil Oza, STAT | 10.07.2025
For two years, a panel of scientific experts, clinicians, and patient advocates had been hammering out ways to increase community engagement in National Institutes of Health-funded science. When they presented their road map to the NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya last...
By Abby McCloskey, The Dallas Morning News | 10.10.2025
We Texans like to do things our way — leave some hide on the fence rather than stay corralled, as goes a line in Wallace O. Chariton’s Texas dictionary This Dog’ll Hunt. Lately, I’ve been wondering what this ethos...
By Julia Black, MIT Technology Review | 10.16.2025
Consider, if you will, the translucent blob in the eye of a microscope: a human blastocyst, the biological specimen that emerges just five days or so after a fateful encounter between egg and sperm. This bundle of cells, about the size of...
By Kaitlin Sullivan, NBC News | 10.15.2025
Two months after she was born, Eliana Nachem got a cough that wouldn’t go away. Three weeks later, she also started having runny stool, prompting a visit to her pediatrician.
Eliana didn’t have allergies or a gastrointestinal condition; instead, tests...