SURROGACY AND DONATION
- Problems were envisaged over making payments to encourage egg-donation for stem cell creation – “unethical and impractical” – and “in reality the number of oocytes would always be in short supply.” The medical benefits should be stressed, as a better inducement. Other ways, though, of stem cell production were preferable, since “conceiving an embryo as a product” would be “unethical”; but if no other way was to be found, “then the embryonic method should be used.”
- Much could be learnt from the creation of animal/human hybrids, a “valid research tool”, but should be kept very strictly as research, and only after extensive consideration of scientific and public debate.
- Partnerships between genetic siblings, and significant genetic influence on a population, especially “loss of diversity”, make the idea “very unwise”, “a nightmare”.
- Unless demonstrably harmful, “reproductive freedom” should be allowed, in one view, and careful legislation should allow people to avoid going underground or being dishonest. An opposing view is that helping people to overseas treatment which is illegal in the UK appears to be “illogical”.
CONSENT AND CONFIDENTIALITY
- Similarity between adopted children and IVF children asserted and disputed. If government withholding information causes anxiety, then that information should not be stored. Loss of anonymity “would greatly reduce the number of people prepared to donate sperm”, for many reasons, including donors’ possibly “hugely” changed circumstances, years later. Retroactive changes to the law would be “grossly unfair”; one softer change suggested was that anonymous donations could be encouraged, “not prohibiting current practice altogether”. The result of recent decision will be anonymity for those who can afford it, with children not knowing “whether they are products of this treatment or not.”
- Both partners’ consent should be required for implantation, so either “irrevocable” consent should be given at the time of the IVF, “or there should be a shift towards storing gametes, rather than embryos”. Although storage of human eggs is neither fully tested nor accepted yet, the law is about right: “formed by mutual consent”, embryos “should only be used with mutual consent”.
- Against the view “that the sperm was obtained without consent […] under false pretences”, is a double IF – if “the woman feels she can raise the child and it was clear that the man wished to become a father then she should be allowed to use the sperm.”
NEW FERTILITY TREATMENTS
- Results can be disappointing, and disruption of the oocyte structure “should be kept to a minimum in clinical cases” until experiment shows clear safety limits.
SCREENING AND THERAPY
- A well-counselled couple, with a doctor believing the method to be chosen out of “real concern”, should be free to go ahead. Concerns “about the disease and the IVF can be considered as well-founded”. This is elsewhere doubted, however, as many female offspring would be generated, 50% of which would be carriers – not “much of a gain over unregulated procreation” – while “selecting eggs to screen out the recessive gene would result in clean offspring of either sex”.
In General Comments the question has been raised about right of the public to influence decisions in the field of assisted reproduction – “Should we leave it to the self-interested ‘experts’ or do we have a right and perhaps obligation to participate in this area of public inquiry”.