Yes to Test-Tube Babies

HEW panel urges lifting of U.S. ban on IVF research

Louise Brown, history's first "test-tube baby," could not have been born in the U.S. Since August 1975 the Federal Government has banned new grants for research on in-vitro fertilization (IVF), and without the money experimentation has virtually ceased. The ban was ordered because of deep moral qualms about scientific tampering with human reproduction. Besides that, IVF involves the moral status of the human embryo, a matter linked to the religiously anguishing abortion debate.

Now the situation is about to change. The Ethics Advisory Board of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare has just given IVF a moral go-ahead and urged HEW to lift the ban. While doing so, it nevertheless recommended research limitations that may influence future policy with regard to such matters as selective human breeding.

The board's decision was reached only after hearings in eleven cities, where testimony was taken on the moral issues from 197 witnesses--ordinary citizens as well as noted scientists and clergymen. The most negative expert, Protestant Moral Theologian Paul Ramsey, saw an "irremovable possibility" that physical or psychological damage might be inflicted on IVF children. A number of scientists, though not against IVF, felt that more research with nonhuman embryos was necessary. So far only a handful of IVF studies has been done with higher primates.

Partly with such objections in mind, the board recommended that as in-vitro research proceeds, the public must be informed of any evidence that IVF produces a higher rate of abnormal children than natural reproduction. It also proposed three other significant safeguards:

> Research should only be funded if it seeks important information that is otherwise unobtainable, and is primarily aimed at making embryo transplants safer and more effective.

> Embryos that are actually implanted should stem only from the sperm and eggs of "lawfully married couples," a rule designed to head off such Huxleian possibilities as surrogate wombs for hire.

> Research should be limited to human embryos in the first 14 days of development after fertilization, the time when implantation into the womb is completed in a normal pregnancy. For many Roman Catholics, and others, the embryo deserves respect as a new human life from the time of fertilization. Catholicism has also opposed IVF because of Pope Pius XII's arguments against all unnatural methods of conception.

Father Richard McCormick, a Georgetown University moral theologian and the only clergyman on the panel, broke with Catholic tradition on both points. The moral claims of the individual embryo, he believes, are open to doubt before implantation, and Pius' arguments are "no longer decisive." McCormick has strong reservations about the wisdom of public funding, however.

HEW Secretary Joseph Califano must act on the recommendations before they have the force of law. Bishop Thomas Kelly, general secretary of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, has urged Califano to continue the ban because there is already "public repugnance" over tax funding of abortions. Whatever Califano decides, Father McCormick predicts that his board's report is "going to be controversial, not only in the Catholic community but in every other one."

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