The Inconvenient Truth of Eggsploitation

Today in the Korea Times, "Egg Donation to be Banned" The government is expected to ban human egg donations late this year, a move apparently motivated by the scandal involving the country’s disgraced cloning scientist Hwang Woo-suk.

Here is my take on all this:

It's human nature to want to explain away truths we'd rather ignore. Every morning millions of people convince themselves that the number on the bathroom scale simply can't be accurate. No fault divorce prevails as we no longer feel the need to fess up to what went wrong—we conveniently claim "irreconcilable differences". 21st century science is also ignoring truth in order to advance its biotechnology agenda. Unfortunately this agenda can be harmful and degrading to human dignity. Telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about difficult issues can just be too inconvenient.

Take a look at recent debates around the reproductive industry's use (and abuse) of young women as harvested eggs sell for a premium to wealthy infertile couples and human cloning researchers. Many would rather ignore the truth that women have a limited number of eggs available to start their family. Most people don't know that in utero, females begin with about 7 million eggs. By the time a baby girl is born, the number of eggs she has drops dramatically to between 1 and 2 million. And by the time this young girl enters puberty, the number of available eggs drops again, down to approximately 300 give or take a 100 or so. That's some attrition rate!

The college girl who thinks that earning some quick cash selling her eggs may have to deal with an inconvenient truth when she finds herself prematurely infertile. Egg harvesting often removes up to 40 eggs at a time. Add in the fact that it is not uncommon for young women to sell their eggs more than once. It is inconvenient to face the truth that egg donation is apt to destroy a young woman's future fertility, leaving her with a grossly depleted supply of eggs by the time she has the chance to start a family of her own.

What is the value of one's fecundity? Is any amount of money adequate to compensate for the grave risks egg donors take? And is it really accurate to characterize this transaction as egg "donation"? Although it may be inconvenient to acknowledge, since money changes hands we are really talking about a booming business—not donation. We inconveniently have to talk about supply and demand, and what the market will bear.

And the egg "donation" business is booming! Lots of people are making lots of money brokering eggs. It is easier to talk about out of pocket expenses and lost wages than the value of an egg from a collegiate with a high SAT score and a good genetic heritage. As it relates to research and egg compensation, this discussion has been all too inconvenient because you cannot get good informed consent when money enters the discussion. As soon as money is on the table, informed consent gets coerced, manipulated and bought—often for a hefty price.

Finally, it's inconvenient to talk about the health risks to young women who subject themselves to very powerful hormones to hyperstimulate their ovaries and then undergo anesthesia and surgery to have their eggs removed via a needle injected through the vaginal wall. Ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS) can lead to stroke, organ failure and even death. Reproductive cancers such as ovarian cancer are also looming realities for young women undergoing egg harvesting procedures. It seems these are truths that we would rather not discuss. They might jeopardize the egg trade and cloning research.

It is much more convenient to swear that women have been properly and adequately informed of the risks. It is easier to minimize the risks and reclassify women diagnosed with OHSS. In the Human Reproduction Update Vol. 9, No. 3, 2003, Drs. M.A. Aboulghar and R.T. Mansour of the Egyptian IVF Center in Cairo, present a review of the classifications of OHSS. Since 1967, when Rabau et. al. first outlined the classification of OHSS listing three categories of mild to moderate and then severe OHSS; shifts have taken place. Navot et. al. in 1992 eliminated mild and moderate categories and distinguished two categories under severe OHSS--severe and critical. In 1999, Rizk and Aboulghar eliminated the mild category since mild forms of OHSS occur in most patients after ovarian stimulation.
How convenient.

Most women will suffer at least mild OHSS, so the egg donation business doesn't document and track these cases. She didn't get sick enough. Can you imagine any drug or surgical procedure which may cause, say a fever in most people, but because most people experienced fever, we just stop tracking and reporting that? If statistics impede "scientific progress", we just redefine them out of existence. We can convince the public and ourselves that all is well. But when we deny inconvenient truths, real people suffer very real harm.

Jennifer Lahl is the National Director of the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network and recently founded Every Woman First, Inc. which launched an international campaign of pro-choice and pro-life people called Hands Off Our Ovaries. This article originally ran in tothesource.org

Children of Men - A Film Review

I had planned to run this review last week, but held off in order to comment on the recent news on the discovery of amniotic fluid stem cells that "hold much the same promise as embryonic stem cells." And we were even tempted today to postpone the review again so as to provide commentary on the latest hot topic in the bioethics news world, “First U. S. Uterus Transplant Planned”. But given that last week and this week the media is reporting on developing bioethics events thrust forth against the back drop of babies and pregnancy, it makes sense to send out our review of the film Children of Men in the context of these messages of infertility, pregnancy, birth and the future of the human race held in our procreative abilities.

Children of Men takes place in London, in the year 2027. For reasons that are unknown, women have stopped reproducing. It has been almost 20 years since a woman has given birth. The movie opens in the midst of political unrest and chaos, a rebel uprising against governmental anti-immigration laws, and the breaking news that the youngest living citizen has just died. It is a time of despair and hopelessness as the future of the human race is on the brink of extinction. The movie publicity states: No Children, No Future, No Hope. Bottom line, if we stop reproducing we cease to exist.

During this time, the rebels discover a young pregnant Fuji woman. This pregnant mother becomes the symbol of hope for those of the uprising as they seek to protect her and get her safely away into the hands of “the Human Project”. Fear surrounds the mother, as she knows many want to destroy her and her unborn child. The government, the rebels believe, would never acknowledge this birth and among the rebels there are those who want to use the child as their political icon while others see the child as the savior of the human race.

Children of Men naturally uses many religious references. How could it not? It would be next to impossible to talk about new life and death, despair and hope, and the future of humanity without any religious frame of reference. The movie offers one possible explanation for the mass infertility. The wrath of God has been poured out, because of our corporate sins and so God has punished us by removing his most precious gift—the gift of life. There are jokes about who the father is and whether or not this is a virgin birth. Just as Mary was the most unlikely of women chosen to usher in the coming Messiah, this Fuji woman is also an unlikely candidate chosen to preserve humanity through the fruit of her womb. The dignity of human life, as a theme, threads throughout the film and culminates with a secular nativity birth. The hope of the world lies in the procreation of the race, starting with this new baby about to be born.

Film has always been a perfect medium to communicate such profound questions about the rawness of life. Movies like GATTACA and The Island offer important commentary on how we treat people and what happens to our culture when certain practices erode the dignity of human life. Even movies like Million Dollar Baby, though we disagree with its conclusions, can force us to wrestle with complex questions about suffering, disabilities and the notion of ‘the life not worth living’.

Children of men is not so much a description of our future as it is a parable describing the often divisive, hostile, and volatile landscape surrounding the reproductive woman of today. For nearly 5 decades now the majority of issues that have created the most heated of debates, starting with the introduction of the Pill to the current Cloning crisis, have completely transformed the way we think about reproduction. Some might even say there is reason to despair as the world jumps on the Cloning bandwagon. But I think there is reason for hope. The somewhat disjointed and raw tale of Children of Men, at moments, served to focus my attention on the beauty of life itself, and maybe that’s a good starting point for giving us hope for our future.

Tiniest Katrina survivor finally born

This is pretty exciting news:

Sixteen months after being rescued as a frozen embryo from a hospital flooded by Hurricane Katrina, Noah Benton Markham entered the world Tuesday morning and was greeted by his cheering family.

The 8 pound, 61/2-ounce boy was born by Caesarean section at 7:23 a.m. CT (6:23 a.m. ET) at St. Tammany Hospital. He was in good shape, doctors said.

Before the procedure Rebekah and Glen Markham had decided that if their baby was a boy, he would be named after the biblical builder of the Ark. A girl would have been Hannah Mae -- Hannah means "God has favored us." (Watch how the embryos were rescued. )

Relatives gathered around as Glen Markham, grinning proudly, carried the tiny blanket-wrapped bundle topped by a pink-and-blue cap out of the operating room. For a few seconds he tried to make them guess whether the baby was a boy or a girl. Then he said "It's a boy!" to an eruption of cheers and applause.

Rebekah Markham's mother, Lezette Crosby, telephoned another relative: "It's Noah! It's Noah! It's a boy!"

"All babies are miracles. But we have some special miracles," said Wanda Stogner, a cousin of Rebekah Markham.

One of the people who made Noah's birth possible joined the family shortly after Noah was born and was hugged by both grandmothers.

"I'm the guy who rescued the embryos," said Roman Pyrzak, lab director for The Fertility Institute of New Orleans.

When Katrina struck, the future Noah was one of 1,400 embryos frozen in canisters of liquid nitrogen at a hospital in eastern New Orleans.

Rebekah Markham, 32, had evacuated before the hurricane with their toddler, Glen Witter "Witt" Markham Jr. Her husband, a New Orleans police officer, stayed to work.

Running from the storm

Mother and son actually evacuated twice. The first time was to relatives' about a half-hour from their home among 40-foot-tall pine trees in Covington.

But when the storm toppled trees and cut electricity across south Louisiana, that first refuge became a poor place to care for a toddler who had turned 1 only 10 days before Katrina, so they went to Rebekah Markham's sister's home in central Louisiana.

A cell phone text message -- "R U OK?" -- the day after the storm told her that her husband had survived.

He was stationed across the Mississippi River from flooded parts of the city. But it had its own dangers. One member of his squad was shot in the head on August 29 after confronting looters at a gas station.

Markham, 42, never got his wife's answer to his text query because his phone's battery was dead. "It was about two weeks before I found out that they were OK," he said.

In the meantime, Pyrzak and Dr. Belinda "Sissy" Sartor of the Fertility Institute had led seven Illinois Conservation Police officers and three Louisiana State Police officers to the facility in flat-bottomed boats brought from Illinois.

Witt is also an in-vitro baby. His embryo was created at the same time as Noah's, but it was implanted immediately, while five others were frozen in case of miscarriage.

The Markhams aren't sure they'll have a third child.

"I thought three would be the ideal number," Rebekah Markham has said. But her medical problems have required bed rest for the first three months of each pregnancy. "And I was even more sick with this one than with Witt."

They also needed a lot of family help to take care of Witt, a boy who never seems to stop running. So any decision probably will be postponed until both children are in school.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Stop Making Sense

I woke up early Sunday morning to a barrage of news headlines.

Newsweek: "Stem cells derived from amniotic fluid show great promise in the lab and may end the divisive ethical debate once and for all"

The Washington Post: "Stem Cells Discovered in Amniotic Fluid"

Los Angeles Times: "Stem Cells In Amniotic Fluid Show Great Promise, Study Says"

Apparently researchers at Wake Forest University and Harvard University have found that amniotic fluid is a rich source of stem cells that "hold much the same promise as embryonic stem cells." These cells are also found in the placenta. So take note, from one baby we have three sources of stem cells: amniotic fluid, placenta and umbilical cord blood.

The press release on the Wake Forest website states that, "Scientists Discover New, Readily Available Source of Stem Cells". Dr. Anthony Atala, senior researcher and director of the Institute of Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest said that the amniotic fluid stem cells (AFS) create muscle, bone, fat, blood vessel, nerve and liver cells, they are easily grown in large quantities because they double every 36 hours, they do not produce tumors and can be grown without the need for feeder cells. In the past, scientists have complained about contamination of stem cell lines from feeder cells, which typically come from mice and are used to grow cell lines on.

Reading the press release and all of the covering news on this discovery one would think the embryonic stem cell debate could finally take its last breath and we could begin our sentences with "remember when" and "back in the day". But that would make too much sense. Atala himself is reticent to downplay embryonic stem cell research. He sent this letter yesterday to Congresswoman Diane Degette and Congressman Mike Castle in response to their "Dear Colleague" letter issued Monday to members of Congress. You may be aware of this bill coming before congress this Thursday, but Degette is saying all of this late breaking news will have no impact on the vote to further fund more embryonic stem cell research in America. Here is the letter in its entirety:

New Scientific Study Regarding Amniotic Stem Cells Proves All Areas Of Regenerative Medicine Must Be Supported At Federal Level

Dear Colleague:

We have attached a story from the Washington Post, entitled "Scientists See Potential in Amniotic Stem Cells," which reports on a study showing that amniotic fluid stem cells are multipotent, conducted by Anthony Atala, director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C. This study demonstrates, once again, the need for the federal government to become involved in ALL types of stem cell research and regenerative medicine.

While this research study is very exciting, it is critical to remember that every type of stem cell is different and how we currently understand their unique abilities are different as well: Adult Stem Cells are already differentiated into cell-specific types and are not pluripotent -- i.e. they cannot turn into any cell type. Adult stem cells are helpful to treating a handful of diseases, such as blood-related cancers.

Cord Blood Cells can primarily be used to treat blood-borne diseases.

Amniotic Fluid Cells -- are multipotent, not pluripotent, which means they can turn into some, but not all cell types. There is no evidence presented in this study to show that amniotic fluid cells have the potential to differentiate into all cell types, including cells needed to treat diabetes. They will be used for a very different purpose in research.

Embryonic Stem Cells are pluripotent and the overwhelming body of scientific research conducted throughout the world has proven that they are the only type of stem cells capable of becoming any cell type in the body.

None of these stem cells are a replacement for another; rather, what we learn from one form of stem cell research may be key to advances in another area. That is why a significant federal commitment should be made to the area of regenerative medicine and all areas of scientific research that may lead to cures for Americans.

You will have the opportunity this week to relax the restrictions on such research in the form of H.R. 3 which will enact strong ethical standards for federally supported embryonic stem cell research and allow such research to move forward on stem cell lines created ethically and with private dollars since 2001.
Sincerely,

Diana DeGette,
MEMBER OF CONGRESS

Mike Castle,

MEMBER OF CONGRESS

So, when we finally get some news that makes good sense, its reactions like those of Castle, DeGette and Atala that make no sense at all.

CBC POLL: What is the #1 reason the scientific community is not satisfied with the growing number of ethical stem cell sources (amniotic, placenta, umbilical cord, adult). Participate in a poll

New Life Helps Life

Sunday, Paul Elias with Associated Press published this that I caught at WashingtonPost.com. Apparently researchers at Wake Forest University and Harvard University have found that amniotic fluid is a rich source of stem cells that “hold much the same promise as embryonic stem cells.” You’d think that this would be the best news since sliced bread ! And the study shows that placentas carry the same stem cells rich with promise.

But like a dog with a bone that just won’t let go, researchers bent on unfettered, unrestricted, and full access to our dollars just won’t give up and applaud the recent success of the Wake Forest and Harvard discovery. Dr. Robert Lanza, chief scientist at the stem cell company Advanced Cell Technology is quoted as saying this about the new stem cells found in amniotic fluid, they “can clearly generate a broad range of important cell types, but they may not do as many tricks as embryonic stem cells”. By tricks, does Lanza mean they don’t have that nasty problem of forming tumors? Exactly what kinds of tricks and how many of them does Lanza want these embryo stem cells to perform? Dr. George Daley, a Harvard University embryo cloning researcher, said, "While they are fascinating subjects of study in their own right, they are not a substitute for human embryonic stem cells, which allow scientists to address a host of other interesting questions in early human development." Daley sounds like he’s talking about a piece of art. Fascinating subjects of study! We’ve just been told that this new discovery has found stem cells with the same promise and yet it is not enough. The truth is, it will never be enough.

Wesley Smith on 2007 Predictions

Vote on our poll at the bottom!

When social critic Jeremy Rifkin predicted the coming of the "biotech century" in 1998, few understood just how right he was. Consider how far biotechnology has traveled since the birth of Dolly the cloned sheep and how these discoveries have impacted the ethics of society: Human cloning is being pursued aggressively, animals are being genetically engineered, and a new eugenics has arisen in which embryos are destroyed if they exhibit "undesirable" attributes—ranging from their sex to the potential of adult onset cancer.

Meanwhile, on the other end of life, "death with dignity" activists continue to push their agendas, including legalizing assisted suicide/euthanasia, futile care theory (which permits doctors to refuse wanted life-sustaining treatment based on quality of life assessments), and the dehydration of people with severe cognitive incapacities.

Behind these discreet issues is a far larger—one might even say epochal—struggle to preserve the sanctity/equality of human life ethic. Look for these issues to be the major flash points of this never-ending contest in 2007, with my predictions about the likely outcomes:

Embryonic Stem Cell Research: I predict that President Bush's Federal Funding limitations will fall. With the new more liberal Congress and the erosion of resistance among some conservatives, legislation to overturn the President's policy will repeatedly pass both houses of Congress. Bush will veto. But eventually the bill will be made part of omnibus legislation, as a consequence of which the veto will be overridden.

I also predict more states will fund ESCR and human research cloning. Big Biotech's propaganda campaign has created an Oklahoma Land Race mentality among the states that are now competing with each other to throw money at biotech companies. This trend will continue in the coming year.

Human Cloning: I predict continued impasse over outlawing or legalizing human cloning. Efforts to outlaw all human cloning at the federal level will not succeed. Neither will efforts to legalize research cloning, while outlawing "reproductive" cloning. The latter has a better chance of passing than the former, but if this happens, the President's veto will not be overturned.

Outlawing Human Egg Markets: I predict more states and countries will outlaw the buying and selling of human eggs. Even though many in society have little concern about the destruction of embryos, many do care about the exploitation of women. As groups like the CBC spread the word that egg procurement is dangerous to women's health, efforts to outlaw the buying and selling of eggs will enjoy increasing success.

Assisted Suicide: I predict no states or countries will legalize in 2007. Euthanasia activists will try to legalize assisted suicide in California, Washington, Vermont, and Hawaii. Also, look for continued agitation in the United Kingdom, France, Australia, and India. None of these proposals will pass in 2007. However, watch out for sleeper legalization effort that could succeed in Spain.

Futile Care Theory: I predict the Texas law permitting futile care impositions to be amended. Legislation to outlaw futile care impositions by hospital ethics committees will not pass in Texas due to resistance by the medical establishment. But the current 10 days allowed patients and families to find a new hospital will be extended, probably to around 30 days.

Partial Birth Abortion: I predict that the Supreme Court of the United States will overturn the partial birth abortion federal ban: Justice Anthony Kennedy will cast the deciding vote reversing his earlier stand against partial birth abortion by voting to overturn the federal ban. For the pro life movement, it will be back to the drawing board, perhaps focusing on parental notification statutes at the state and federal levels.

I might be right or wrong about each or all of the above forecasts. But here is one final prediction about which I am supremely confident: The CBC will continue to fight for universal human rights by remaining committed to the profound understanding that human life has intrinsic value simply and merely because it is human.

Select the top 3 predictions you think will come true. Participate in a Poll.

Wesley J. Smith J.D. Special Consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network