Never satisfied
Posted by Marcy Darnovsky March 9, 2007
Biopolitical Times
Are researchers justified in asking women to provide their eggs for research cloning? If they are, or if the work is going to proceed in any case, how can the risks of egg retrieval be minimized? And what about money - should women be paid for their time and risk-taking, or would payments inappropriately entice those most in need of quick cash?
For many people - both supporters of research cloning and skeptics of it - these are important and complex questions, worthy of careful attention and deliberation.
Others, including British cloning researcher Professor Alison Murdoch, are apparently impatient with all the dilly-dallying.
Murdoch leads one of two British teams to which the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has granted a license for efforts to clone human embryos. She also directs a fertility clinic.
The HFEA has recently approved a plan, at Murdoch's request, that allows clinics to offer half-price treatments to women who agree to donate half the eggs they produce for cloning research. An advantage of this arrangement is that eggs for research would come from women who have already decided to undergo egg retrieval procedures for fertility purposes, so that no additional woman would be put at risk. It does, however, constitute an end run of sorts around the prohibition on compensating women who provide eggs for research beyond reimbursing their direct expenses.
It also raises questions about conflicting priorities on the part of those procuring the eggs. The woman seeking treatment wants to get pregnant. The cloning researcher wants raw materials. Both need eggs. The potential for problems arising from divided loyalties is great when, as in Murdoch's case, the party responsible for the well-being of the woman is also the high-profile head of a research team striving to win what some scientists call the "cloning race."
Murdoch's dual role has previously been called into question - from another angle - by her former research colleague Dr. Mirodrag Stojkovic (with whom she is pictured here). In 2005, Murdoch announced at a press conference that she and her team had successfully cloned a human embryo, though they failed to derive stem cells from it. Stojkovic, who was not at the press conference, accused her of arranging it without telling him or other team members, and of breaching good scientific practice by publicizing the work before it had undergone peer review. Stojkovic also said Murdoch was trying to monopolize credit for the team's work.
According to the UK Times, "Although Murdoch is widely described as the leader of Britain's cloning team, Stojkovic insists her contribution was limited to providing human eggs from her fertility clinic for the experiments…`The laboratory scientists do not need someone who has been doing nothing in the laboratory and who knows nothing about the work, to represent them,'" he said.
Stojkovic later said the dispute was part of the reason he quit his position at the University of Newcastle and moved to a research center in Spain.
So Stojkovic is gone, Murdoch is in charge of both egg procurement and cloning research, and the HFEA has given her the green light to divert eggs retrieved for fertility treatments to her research effort.
But Murdoch is not content. According to news accounts, she told a meeting of British stem cell scientists earlier this month that "excessive bureaucracy imposed by the [HFEA] was prohibiting development in stem cell research and threatening Britain's position as a world leader in the field." She complained about red tape and said that the government is putting "barbed wire" around her research.
A question for Professor Murdoch and other cloning researchers: What comes first, the woman or her eggs?
For many people - both supporters of research cloning and skeptics of it - these are important and complex questions, worthy of careful attention and deliberation.
Others, including British cloning researcher Professor Alison Murdoch, are apparently impatient with all the dilly-dallying.
Murdoch leads one of two British teams to which the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has granted a license for efforts to clone human embryos. She also directs a fertility clinic.
The HFEA has recently approved a plan, at Murdoch's request, that allows clinics to offer half-price treatments to women who agree to donate half the eggs they produce for cloning research. An advantage of this arrangement is that eggs for research would come from women who have already decided to undergo egg retrieval procedures for fertility purposes, so that no additional woman would be put at risk. It does, however, constitute an end run of sorts around the prohibition on compensating women who provide eggs for research beyond reimbursing their direct expenses.
It also raises questions about conflicting priorities on the part of those procuring the eggs. The woman seeking treatment wants to get pregnant. The cloning researcher wants raw materials. Both need eggs. The potential for problems arising from divided loyalties is great when, as in Murdoch's case, the party responsible for the well-being of the woman is also the high-profile head of a research team striving to win what some scientists call the "cloning race."
Murdoch's dual role has previously been called into question - from another angle - by her former research colleague Dr. Mirodrag Stojkovic (with whom she is pictured here). In 2005, Murdoch announced at a press conference that she and her team had successfully cloned a human embryo, though they failed to derive stem cells from it. Stojkovic, who was not at the press conference, accused her of arranging it without telling him or other team members, and of breaching good scientific practice by publicizing the work before it had undergone peer review. Stojkovic also said Murdoch was trying to monopolize credit for the team's work.
According to the UK Times, "Although Murdoch is widely described as the leader of Britain's cloning team, Stojkovic insists her contribution was limited to providing human eggs from her fertility clinic for the experiments…`The laboratory scientists do not need someone who has been doing nothing in the laboratory and who knows nothing about the work, to represent them,'" he said.
Stojkovic later said the dispute was part of the reason he quit his position at the University of Newcastle and moved to a research center in Spain.
So Stojkovic is gone, Murdoch is in charge of both egg procurement and cloning research, and the HFEA has given her the green light to divert eggs retrieved for fertility treatments to her research effort.
But Murdoch is not content. According to news accounts, she told a meeting of British stem cell scientists earlier this month that "excessive bureaucracy imposed by the [HFEA] was prohibiting development in stem cell research and threatening Britain's position as a world leader in the field." She complained about red tape and said that the government is putting "barbed wire" around her research.
A question for Professor Murdoch and other cloning researchers: What comes first, the woman or her eggs?