IN A break from the US ethical consensus, the state of New York has decided that women can be paid to donate their eggs for research. The move should boost research into therapeutic cloning, which aims to create stem cells matched to individual patients.
Women who donate eggs must have hormone injections to persuade their ovaries to release a batch of eggs in one go. This is uncomfortable, can lead to complications, and the long-term risks remain uncertain.
Clinics in the US pay several thousand dollars to women who donate eggs for IVF. But most ethics bodies that have considered donations for research are against paying for eggs, given the health risks associated with donating 鈥� in 2005 the US National Academies issued discouraging the practice. As a result, stem cell biologists have struggled to find enough eggs for cloning experiments.
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鈥淪tem cell biologists have struggled to find enough eggs for cloning experiments鈥�
Now the 鈥� which will award $50 million each year for stem cell research in New York over the coming decade 鈥� has that modest payments can be made. 鈥淲e were unable to come up with an ethical reason for why we should pay for reproductive donations but not for research,鈥� says of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York, who sat on the ethics committee that advised the board.
, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia who helped write the National Academies鈥� guidelines, worries that there may be a public backlash against the decision, since so many Americans remain uncomfortable with cloning research.
Other states with stem cell initiatives will now be keeping a close eye on public opinion. But the hands of stem cell organisations in are tied, after a state law banned payments other than direct expenses.