Stem cell research: Fresh ova from fresh women
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde author Irene Stratenwerth
Every week new headlines. Cloning research is currently dominated by gold rush. The latest coup has succeeded Californian researchers: From a female egg and the genome of a male skin cell, they have allegedly cloned an embryo.
Such experiments are questionable for many reasons. The question of whether an embryo produced in the laboratory should be regarded as an expectant human being with his own dignity (and his own rights) is vehemently contested by medical ethicists and theologians.
However, one aspect is often far too short in the debate. The Cologne clone researcher Jürgen Hescheler formulates it this week in the "mirror" so: "The supply of as fresh as possible ova from young women as possible in this research is the crucial point at which most scientists fail."
The Californian researchers used 29 fresh eggs for their experiment, donated by three young women. The circumstances are unknown. The Korean researcher Hwang Woo Suk, who was a scavenger two years ago, had abused his own staff as egg donors. Young women risking their own health and fertility - for medical advances that are still completely uncertain.
Egg donations are stressful and risky. The hormone treatment to prepare for the procedure is suspected of causing cancer. Every tenth woman suffers from side effects such as cysts, depression or pain after treatment; one in a hundred is a life-threatening overstimulation syndrome - with kidney failure, strokes or pulmonary embolism. Even the "harvesting" of the eggs, an operative procedure, has its own risks.
No wonder that egg cells are in short supply worldwide. In England, fertility patients are now offered to donate their excess oocytes to science - for a £ 1500 reduction in in vitro fertilization. 100 women are said to have already agreed, but only 15 were eligible as donors. Among other things, because IVF patients are often not quite young.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde reported in autumn 2005 on criminal methods used to promote young women in Romania for € 250 as egg donors and leave them alone with serious health consequences. After this reportage one suspects how the enormous need of the science could be satisfied: Poor young women finally gives it everywhere in the world. Meanwhile, German researchers are not tired of complaining about the repressive policies that prohibit research in this area on newly created embryonic stem cells.
But now there were completely different news: The Berlin-based Max Planck Institute, it can be read, is successful and Europe's leader in the development of a method that can be used to transform human skin cells into stem cells. No woman has to give only one egg for that. Scientists speculate that "consuming embryo research" may sooner or later be a thing of the past.
Since woman is happy once to live in a country in which the egg donation prohibited and embryo research is only very limited possible. Wherefore researchers sometimes even come up with better ideas. And it's a little less dangerous to be a woman.
What is your opinion about the article and the egg donation? Write us in the comments!
