How to Make a Family: The Blog

Let's Watch Georgia, But Divert Your Eyes From the Sidebars

A senate committee in the state of Georgia is considering legislation that will try to nail down embryo ownership issues. This article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution says there's additional talk about "limiting the number of eggs a couple can fertilize at a time."

I don't see such topics being given more than a glancing write-up, but look at the ruckus started by the article, in the readers' comments at article bottom. There's scarcely a thing so filled with unbridled emotion as infertility discussions.

Just makes me wonder who needs attention at this time of this particular year in Georgia.

Link: Questions arise about procedure's surplus embryos | ajc.com.

Speaking of... Voice of patients

Over at Revolution Health, Tara Cousineau, PhD, has commented on recent reports about an upcoming article in Science. The article will give more voice to fertility patients regarding the question of what to do about the embies...

Link: Embryo donation: Voice of patients - Blogs - Revolution Health.

... and stem cells' creators??

I admire Nature, the work they do, service they perform. But, well, maybe I'm just a tad sensitive of late -- please don't ask the people who know me best, they'll only nod their heads and walk away muttering -- or perhaps I should just put that partition up again, the opaque one that I built in 2001 when it became clear to me that my audience really gives fewer than two whits about stem cell news... At any rate, here I go again, feeling left out on behalf of the creators of stem cells.

So, I hear about a new site by Nature, tightly focused on all-things-stem-cells. Some of you know me well enough to recall my stance that the first area of a site worth visiting is the About Us page. The new site, called Nature Reports Stem Cells, includes some heavy hitting commentary and reporting on the related science, research, politics, and society ramifications. It's packaged neatly, too, warmer than a deep science site usually appears. Pretty, even.

But here's the rub -- for me. Could be only me. I get that. But here it is, from their About page... "Our goal is [to] enlighten and promote communication in stem cell research by providing content as diverse as the stakeholders in this field—all the scientists, policy makers, ethicists, clinicians, and patients who are driving stem cell research forward."

So, just to clarify -- are the people who are making the hundreds of thousands of embryos that could be culled for use by this science being lumped into the stakeholder category of "patients"?

True, the broad topic of "stem cell" isn't only about those derived from the embryos about which I'm concerned. But really... a lot (most?) of the politics of this science is indeed derived from the heated debates related to life, when it begins, and within which frame we should view these embryos lying frozen in cryo facilities around the U.S.

When I read the mission sentence above from Nature Reports, I hear "patients" to mean the people who will likely wind up benefiting the most from stem cell research -- individuals and groups with certain conditions that can possibly be rectified with treatments and cures from stem cell research and development. I don't hear "infertility patients" within that text.

Maybe I'll find what I'm looking for once I take a deeper gander at the site. I'm hoping to find some real addressing of the issues as they relate to the people who are, at this moment, creating tens of thousands more embryos that will be added to the stockpile.

At this point, a solid seven years after I first wrote about connecting the baby-making-cum-stem-cell-creators with the decision makers and hearing the font fall with a silent thud on the cyber copyroom floor, I'd be appeased by even just a mention of this group's existence.

But again, maybe it's just me.

Link: about the site : Nature Reports Stem Cells.

Optimist's Prediction on Embryonic Stem Cells

On Edge, several great brains were asked to give the rest of us an optimistic viewpoint on myriad scientific topics. Oxford professor, Chief of the UK's Medical Research Council, and author of The Mind's Brain, Colin Blakemore said that the hooplah surrounding embryonic stem cell research will die a natural death.

Referring to morality as "a matter of utilitarian dialectic", Blakemore says that as a mathematical "ratio of perceived benefit to theoretical cost" shifts, attitudes toward using embryos to create miraculous cures and fixes to human conditions will move from moral outrage to tolerance of necessary evils and, finally, acceptance for the common good.

He disclaims his own prediction by calling himself a natural optimist.

Stem-Cell Funding Tug o'War

Funding for stem cell research has been turned into a love-hate scenario for voters. As is often the case, the answer probably lies in the middle. Recent elections point to a public that likes the idea of government getting into the game, in spite of what Bush said in 2001.

However, Sigrid Fry-Revere, director of bioethics studies at the Cato Institute, says that government-funded research is proving to be "bureaucratic, expensive, wasteful, fickle and divisive." She says that among the recent related elections, only Missouri got it right. Using the story of how IVF developed into the giant industry it is now even after government refused to get on board the research train, Fry-Revere illustrates her point that private money is the way to go and broad legalization of stem cell research is the real issue.

Source: No Tax Money for Stem Cells, by Sigrid Fry-Revere

Listen to The Man

You might've heard Rush Limbaugh claim that Michael J. Fox was putting us on in a recent campaign ad. Yeah, I ignore Limbaugh, too, so I didn't bother to actually read his beef. But I couldn't pass up this interview that Katie Couric of CBS News did with Fox afterward.

He's hoping people will say "This is big, this is not a wedge issue..." about the funding of stem cell research by the U.S. government.

I'm hoping that the creators and, thereby, owners of the hundreds of thousands of stored embryos in this country will just watch this interview and listen to this man.

So You Wanna Donate Eggs?

More of what's being said 'out there' (in that world that seems to curiously have no relation to baby-making patients) on the sticky wickets of paying for research-bound eggs and embryos:

Liza Mundy, that lucky gal who gets all the good assignments, has done it again for Mother Jones (July/Aug2006) in Souls on Ice: America's Embryo Glut and the Wasted Promise of Stem Cell Research. Ouch. She covers the gamut here, very readable, highly recommended for all you embryo-creators out there.

Then, Elizabeth Gettelman follows up in the same issue, same mag, with Splitting the Baby: The Public Supports It, So Why No Stem Cell Research? Quick piece that delves a bit more into the games that politicians play to win both your votes and a workaround to embryonic stem cell research.

From Sept 13 LA Times, published just before the new Calif legislation was signed preventing donors of eggs for research from being compensated, describes the confusing mix of advocates in this picture. Should women be protected from exploitation or given every chance to make their own choices? I'm linking to New Battles Lines Are Drawn Over Egg Donation as it's presented on the Bedford Stem Cell Research Foundation website because I'm hoping to reach their quoted director, Ann Kiessling, PhD, for comment.

On that note, I spoke already to Dale Carlson of California Institute for Regenerative Medicine about the hoopla. He clarified that the signed legislation applies to non-CIRM research (they have their own regulations in place,) and he feels "positive about" the situation of donor-egg procurement sans compensation based on some reported research that a majority of IVF egg donors have indicated they'd let their cells go for other reasons, too. Kudos to Dale for referring me to Kiessling and others.

Finally, for now, though not California-specific, National Review Online's editor, Kathryn Jean Lopez has written about Missouri's upcoming attempt to legislate the mess in their state. If you can just get past her statement that "The fact is, cloning by any other name is still cloning...," in the article, The Clone-Me-State: Eggsploitation in Missouri, the rest of the piece is interesting.

Babies & Politics

Okay, tell me if this is a no-brainer: people who desperately want a child and can't seem to cook one up on their own soon wind up feeling a lot like horses at the track. Blinders on to avoid distractions from the race against time, their dwindling finances, maternal aging... They move through their new World of Infertility at a dizzying pace. They have to -- there's so much to learn at first, and the new stuff -- real scientific advances and rehashed solutions -- just keeps coming.

Who has time to think about the more mundane aspects of life, like politics?

You know, I asked my first question, about this being a no-brainer, because I often found myself the oddball in my own infertility community, a million years ago. I did care about politics still. More than that, I saw the powerful connections between people like me who were embarking on techno-baby-making and tons of seemingly unrelated bigger pictures, not the least of which were stem cell issues.

I even tried to get infertility consumers to recognize their potential impact on the legislation of stem cell research funding. I wanted them to rally -- one way or the other, I didn't care, pick a side and say something -- since, after all, they were the literal creators of most of the available embryos at that point. Yeah, that went over big. I think I had one person respond with something resembling interest to an article I wrote in 2000 about the impending Bush decision.

So, just how much of a time-waster will it be to bring politics into this blog? You tell me. I'm the oddball.

Here we go:

California now has legislation that will both protect women who donate their eggs specifically for research purposes, yet also prevent them from being compensated for same. The research in question needs donor eggs in order to create embryos from which new stem cell lines will emerge. Women who donate their eggs for use with IVF to help infertile couples can still be paid for their trouble. But the state legislature felt that body tissue donations for research should not carry a price.

My question: If more infertility patients were willing to donate their IVF-created embryos to research, would there even be much need to go hawking for egg donors willing to graciously and sans compensation subject themselves to superovulation and unknown future risks?

I've sent that now-rhetorical question to the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the agency that will be administering grant money for the research. Will keep you posted.

You can listen to a bit more on the legislation at NPR's "All Things Considered" with comments from Joe Palca, science correspondent (Block, "All Things Considered," NPR, 9/28). The complete segment is available online in RealPlayer.