THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 2, 1996 TAG: 9608020441
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARIE JOYCE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 66 lines
British scientists at fertility clinics reluctantly destroyed several thousand abandoned human embryos Thursday to comply with a law limiting storage time.
In Norfolk, the director of the Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine, one of this country's leading fertility clinics, predicted the action will spur discussion about abandoned embryos in the United States.
``This will be a real issue to be bandied about,'' said Gary D. Hodgen, Jones Institute president. ``At some point, there will have to be a decision.''
However, Hodgen noted, only a very small percentage of embryos at the Jones Institute are unclaimed. The embryos are the result of in vitro fertilization.
Of the 2,600 or so embryos stored at the institute, only about 100 are unclaimed.
Over the years, the institute has frozen about 10,000, but most - about 7,400 - have been used.
The destruction in Britain was the result of a five-year deadline, imposed under a law implemented in 1991. It was carried out over the objections of anti-abortion activists.
Scientists complained about waste of their work as they smashed glass tubes containing the embryos. The four-cell dots the size of a grain of sand died within minutes and were incinerated, the Associated Press reported.
There were last-minute reprieves for the embryos of two married women - an American and a British soldier stationed in Germany. They called clinics just hours before the destruction began, according to the AP.
But the rest of some 900 donor couples, with a total of 3,300 unclaimed embryos, couldn't be traced or didn't answer registered letters.
Earlier Thursday, a government law officer, Official Solicitor Peter Harris, rejected an appeal by an anti-abortion group, Life Campaigns, to intervene. Harris said he could represent only ``a natural person - a life in being,'' the AP reported.
During IVF, doctors collect several eggs from a woman and fertilize them in a dish. A few of the resulting embryos are transferred to the uterus, with the hope that at least one will implant there and grow.
The rest of the fertilized embryos can be stored for future implantation attempts. Most patients eventually use all their embryos.
At the Jones Institute, patients are told to notify the institute of any change of address. Once a year, the clinic writes them asking for the annual $600 storage fee. So far, the Jones Institute staff has kept embryos even when they can't find the couple.
``There are always going to be a very few people that leak through the system,'' said Hodgen.
Some clinics charge a fee that escalates each year to prompt people to decide what they want done with the embryos, or they remind patients with monthly bills. The Jones Institute doesn't, said Jacob F. Mayer, director of the institute's embryology laboratory.
Most of the embryos in storage at the Jones Institute, part of Eastern Virginia Medical School, have been there less than five years, he said.
Mayer said discussion had arisen in U.S. professional circles even before the British deadline.
``I'd like to have closure,'' Mayer said. ``Clearly, we don't want to see a situation where we're storing (embryos) forever.''
But, he added, clinics can't do anything ``at the expense of the patient.'' ILLUSTRATION: ASSOCIATED PRESS photo
In Britain, glass tubes containing thousands of embryos like this
one were smashed. The fertilized eggs, about the size of a grain of
sand, died within minutes, and were incinerated. by CNB