Bioethics council reaches consensus on assisted reproduction

The panel's report calls for a ban on cloning babies but would not outlaw human embryonic stem cell research altogether.

By Andis Robeznieks, AMNews staff. April 19, 2004.

The President's Council on Bioethics has released a consensus report on reproductive technology that calls for federally funded research, more self-regulation and a ban on "outlying experimental practices."

"Reproduction and Responsibility: The Regulation of New Biotechnologies" is the council's fifth report. Council member William Hurlbut, MD, said it was intended to serve as the foundation for future legislation. "We were trying to make a document that had some forward progress," said Dr. Hurlbut, a consulting professor in human biology at Stanford University.

Dr. Hurlbut said controversy in the early days of assisted reproduction led to an environment with little oversight and follow-up research, and now the field's "self-evident and compelling uniqueness" requires that these deficiencies be corrected.

"Clearly, if medicine should be careful anywhere, it should be careful when it is engaging in a voluntary intervention at the very origins of life," he said. "Here the therapy is more than the treatment of an individual disorder. The medical interest is, by intention, the creation of a new life."

In part, because of the well-known conservative philosophy of the council's chair, Leon Kass, MD, PhD, medical societies representing assisted-reproduction physicians were concerned that the report would call for more restrictions on the use and scope of assisted-reproduction technology.

There was relief when the report was issued, and it appeared that the council had incorporated many opinions relayed to them by groups such as the American Society for Reproductive Medicine and the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology.