More than 40 scientists, bioethicists, lawyers and science journal editors are calling on their colleagues, policy makers and the public to begin developing guidelines for the research and reproductive use of stem cell-derived eggs and sperm, even though such use may be a decade or more away.
"Science has always moved faster than social debate or society's ability to grapple with these issues," says Debra Mathews, Ph.D., lead author of a paper published in the July issue of Cell Stem Cell and assistant director of science programs at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. The paper calls for all parties to begin engaging in open discussion and debates, and describes the need for informed social policy well in advance of the eventual use of eggs and sperm derived from pluripotent stem cells.
Mathews said stem cell researchers need to be better prepared to address public questions about uses of so-called pluripotent stem cell-derived gametes - regardless of how realistic or soon those uses may be. Such uses would potentially include reproductive uses such as the creation of sperm and eggs for in vitro fertilization, embryo selection based on genetic profile, and the creation of embryos from the tissues of fetuses, children and the deceased.
The issues are too complex, and the stakes are too high, the authors suggest, for the public to be caught unaware by some new capability for using stem cell-derived gametes, and the research already is moving rapidly toward generation of sperm and eggs capable of making human embryos and potentially children.
"Because derived-gamete research will require the creation and destruction of human embryos, this line of research will be morally objectionable to those who imbue human embryos with full moral status, and those objections must be addressed," the authors state.
In their paper, the Hopkins-led team described an analysis of the current state of pluripotent stem cell science and suggested a framework for the debates that need to take place.
There was consensus by the authors that policymakers should not restrict scientific inquiry solely because ethical or moral disagreement exists about the use of these cells. Instead, they offered recommendations for guidelines that would be the focus of social debate. Among them were that restrictions should be specific to those aspects of the technology that are deemed morally unacceptable in a given nation or state, and that specific consent should be required of tissue donors whose cells will be used to derive gametes for use in reproduction. This approach would rule out using for reproduction any tissue from fetuses, minors and the deceased. Consent, they said, need not be required in situations involving laboratory studies that produce no embryos.
The authors emphasized that significant oversight rules must be in place before any reproductive uses of gametes even begins, and early attempts to use gametes for these purposes should take place only as part of clinical research that follows the highest ethical standards.