GESTIÓN EN SALUD PÚBLICA: Rethinking the 14 day rule | BioEdge

sábado, 10 de junio de 2017

Rethinking the 14 day rule | BioEdge | Sunday, June 11, 2017 |

Rethinking the 14 day rule

| BioEdge | Sunday, June 11, 2017 |

Rethinking the 14 day rule

by Xavier Symons | 10 Jun 2017 |

Policy analysts in the United States and UK are calling for a “reconsideration” of the decades-old 14-day embryo experimentation rule - a regulation that requires scientists to terminate any embryo in vitro before it reaches two weeks of development. New embryology research indicates that scientists can now grow embryos in a culture dish well past 14 days, permitting research into early human development and various diseases.

An article in this month’s Hastings Center Report calls for “a new public discussion” of the longstanding regulation, suggesting in particular that we take into account new scientific and social perspectives on embryo research. “...our understandings of responsible research have evolved to require greater public participation in decisions about science”, writes University of Edinburgh bioethicist Sarah Chan. “Broader public discourse must begin now”.

Chan says that the 14-day rule was originally based on an arbitrary compromise between different viewpoints on the moral status of the embryo. We should be open to considering whether the public now wants to extend or restrict the limits we place on embryo research.

The purpose of engagement cannot be solely to reassure the public or gain public acceptance; nor should academics concerned with policy be open to engagement only when we feel safe that publics will tamely agree with us. An even-handed approach is needed: we need to be willing to hear what people have to say, even if we may not like it.”

Baroness Mary Warnock, a moral philosopher and one of the original proponents of the rule, has cautioned against change. According to Warnock, the rule provides a way of allowing for embryo research, while still addressing slippery slope concerns: “you cannot successfully block a slippery slope except by a fixed and invariable obstacle, which is what the 14-day rule provided.”

Sunday, June 11, 2017

We may have over-egged today’s newsletter with stories about surrogacy, but they all appeared this week with a common theme: what about the mothers? The accepted wisdom is that most mothers are well compensated and give up the child happily.

Not always.

Take the case in England of a surrogate mother who has just been jailed for 22 weeks for stalking a judge and a court welfare officer. The terrified family court judge had awarded the child she bore to the commissioning gay couple even though Lian Harris had changed her mind and wanted to keep it.

Ms Harris snapped.

Over a year she harassed the judge, protested outside the house of politicians and lawyers, unfurled a banner on Westminister Cathedral saying “Family courts do evil”, attempted to fasten herself to the second-floor balcony of the social worker’s home, and tried to organised harassment on Facebook, amongst other stunts.

Not a happy camper.

Ms Harris is said to be an exceptional case. But how do we know? Where are the longitudinal studies to prove that surrogate mothers live happily ever after once they surrender the child they carried for nine months?