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STEM CELLS, EMBRYO DONATION AND INFORMED CONSENT

LifeSite Stem Cell feature page addition OTTAWA, Aug 9, 2001 (LSN.ca) - Proposed Canadian legislation governing assisted human reproduction and similar legislation in various countries permits scientists to experiment on human embryos created originally for in vitro fertilization. The one condition is that the embryo donors and other decision makers must give legally valid informed consent. However, Dr. John Shea, MD, who has researched the topic extensively, suggests that such informed consent is highly unlikely because of the rampant misinformation about research on human embryos.

Dr. Shea explains that the purpose of informed consent is to ensure that a decision maker has the information necessary to make an "informed" decision based on accurate knowledge of the facts involved. "For the consent to be valid legally, there must have been no personal pressure brought to bear on the decision maker's will that would cause him or her to make a decision that was unintended or undesired," writes Dr. Shea. "The information should be conveyed by experts who are professionally competent to provide the actual facts needed (either orally or in writing) and this informed consent should be documented in writing."

Dr. Shea asks if donors of embryos are fully and accurately informed that:

- Donated embryos are killed when used to harvest stem cells for research
- Embryonic stem cells derived from "donated" embryos have the capacity to become embryos themselves
(see http://www.lifesite.net/features/stemcellembryo/stemcellsembryos.html)
- The donor's own living progeny may be reproduced over and over again for years in laboratories, cultivated in vitro or in vivo in other women or even animal surrogate wombs, and used for whatever research projects await science in the future.

Furthermore, the proposed Canadian legislation would allow for the creation of human chimeras (a. - a human embryo or fetus into which a cell of any non-human life form has been introduced: or b. - a non-human embryo or fetus into which a cell of a human embryo or fetus, or of a human being already born, has been introduced). Thus the donor's embryo could be used to form human or animal chimeras or used in positive eugenic research in which their progeny could be permanently genetically altered for generations to come.

Dr. Shea concludes, "It would seem that the use of so much questionable science, and the pressures and influences to which confused and anxious potential donors of human embryos have been presented in the past, and may also in the future, would preclude many potential donors from giving any ethically or legally valid informed consent."

See Dr. Shea's full paper and other resources on LifeSite's Stem Cell page at:
http://www.lifesite.net/features/stemcellembryo/index.html

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