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Embryo splitting caught in cloning controversy
Technique could raise odds for infertile couples
From Medical Correspondent Rhonda Rowland
ATLANTA (CNN) -- For infertile couples, in vitro fertilization (IVF), where egg and sperm are joined in a laboratory, may provide their only chance to have a baby. But the technique is still a roll of the dice.
"IVF is not as successful as we would like it," says Michael Tucker of the Reproductive Biology Association. "On average, only one in five or one in six of all the embryos that we generate in the IVF lab has the potential to go to full-term delivery as a baby."
There is a way to perhaps double those odds. But this technique -- called embryo splitting -- isn't being used because of all the recent hubbub over cloning.
Embryo splitting is just what its name suggests. A new, identical embryo is split off from the original embryo made in the IVF lab. Essentially, it is the same procedure that happens naturally in producing identical twins.
Fertility labs across the United States have considered using the technique, which is perfectly legal. But most have backed off, in large part due to the backlash over Dolly, the cloned Scottish sheep.
The revelation of her existence sparked a controversy over the potential for human cloning. However, some researchers don't consider embryo splitting to be cloning in its commonly understood sense.
"It's a matter of semantics, because you are creating an identical twin," says Dr. Hilton Kort of Reproductive Biology. "Cloning is creating a replica of a person or an animal. This is creating what happens in nature every single day."
"The population should be aware that we have our own sets of clones out there, and that this isn't so sinister when you're talking about working in a laboratory to intentionally create a second or third embryo," says Dr. Mark Sauer of Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York.
Kort and Sauer say embryo splitting doesn't present an ethical dilemma, as long as it's not abused.
"If you're creating a second individual or second embryo for spare parts or for storage for future use, that's a different issue," says Sauer. "But most of those kind of abuses would have to be very intentionally orchestrated and could easily be prevented."
"We need to be sure this is a safe procedure -- medically, ethically, in every single way," says Kort.
Related stories:
- Presidential panel to recommend law banning human cloning - June 4, 1997
- Scientist who cloned sheep: Cloning humans would be 'inhuman' - Mar. 12, 1997
- Clinton bars federal funds for human cloning research - Mar. 4, 1997
- Scientists grow monkeys from cloned embryos - Mar. 2, 1997
Related sites:
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- Roslin Institute
- The Johns Hopkins University BioInformatics Web Server
- Genetics and Ethics - Biomedical Ethics Unit, McGill University
- Human Cloning: An Atlantean Odyssey? - Dr Munawar Ahmad Anees
- The Human Genome Organisation
- Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy - Animals as Inventions: Biotechnology and Intellectual Property Rights
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