Sydney
14 July 2002
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School defies terrorism
Pope ‘force for freedom and good’
Vinnies reaches out: a new generation
Abuse allegations ‘devastating’
Caritas renews call for help as southern Africa faces food crisis
Jason scores with ‘no sex before marriage’
‘Return to the scapular’ call for feast day
Medjugorje visionary calls off visit
‘Boundless plains’ to share with refugees? - Spirituality in Pub
Health care ‘not a commodity’
Fr Pat goes back to St Pat’s for jubilee Mass
Queensland search for men to teach
St Vincent’s clocks up 1000
IVF baby farming banned - Govt ‘no’ to sale of eggs
Witchcraft move under fire
Editorial: Tangled web
Letters: Catholicism and the Royal Family
Conversation: Never say never - always hope - Larri Hayhurst, nurse educator
Reflections: Justice: what it means to me
Earthcare - a call to ‘expand our vision’
Opinion: Where young and old share the joy!
Comfort zone
Embryos used to find ‘morning after’ pill
Stem-cell research: Warning of embryo use in human tests
Stem-cell research: Legislation provides for ‘destruction of embryos’
Stem-cell research: ‘Key principle’ at stake
Stem-cell research: Risks to egg and sperm
Resurrection and ‘last things’ in Catechism series
Sing? Yes! Sing-along syndrome? No!
Inspirations: Joseph, 8, gives up toys for Cebu kids
Embryos used to find ‘morning after’ pill
By Chris Lindsay
One outcome from research on human embryos which would be allowed under legislation currently before Federal Parliament would be a new morning after pill contraceptive, according to Dr John Fleming, director of the Southern Cross Bioethics Centre in Adelaide.
He said the contraceptive research, and other research into problems with current IVF techniques, would require massive destruction of human embryos.
Dr Fleming said the new contraceptive would work as a vaccine.
“Early embryos manufacture a substance called human chorionic gonadotrophin (HCG) which signals to the mother: ‘I am here, don’t have a period’.
“HCG also helps in the manufacture of the placenta to attach to the mother.
“If scientists can develop a vaccine to stop the embryo developing HGC the embryo will die, it will be flushed out with the next period.
“In any case there would be no placenta so the embryo would die anyway.
“The woman could be injected with this vaccine and be prevented from becoming pregnant for a period of time, or it could be used as a morning after pill.
“It would have fewer side effects than current methods and be very attractive to drug manufacturers who would benefit financially.”
Dr Fleming said claims that the legislation currently before parliament was largely for stemcell research into curing diseases were wrong, and politicians were naïve to believe this was the case.
He said current IVF practices were problematic and researchers wanted to use embryos to improve them.
He said children conceived through the IVF process are more likely to suffer from diseases such as diabetes and obesity, and scientists want to experiment on human embryos to counter this.
“They also want access to embryos to test drugs on human beings, and to find new methods of contraception.”
He said there is now increasing evidence of the long term health consequences for people born from IVF treatment.
“There is a huge incidence of abnormalities in IVF children, largely caused by nutritional stress,” he said.
Dr Fleming said the same problem of nutritional stress can occur in children conceived in the normal way when there is a fault in the way the placenta attaches itself to the womb.
“The embryo doesn't get enough nutrition, and it has been discovered that this predisposes the child to developing diabetes and obesity in later life, usually in their 50s.
“Now scientists working in reproduction techniques are saying this is likely in IVF children because of faults in the culture medium used when the embryos are forming outside the womb.
“They expect that in about 30 years these problems will start to surface in adults who were IVF children.
“Scientists now want to use research on human embryos to minimise this problem.
“They want to grow the embryos in different cultures and then dissect them to see which one are doing best so they can improve the culture medium.”
Dr Fleming said this was usually done when the embryo was five days old.
But the legislation allowed for it to be done up to 14 days.
He said Swedish research had shown that IVF children were 3.7 times more likely to have cerebral palsy than non-IVF children.
“This is because of the high risk of twin pregnancies, low birth weight and prematurity - all strong factors in IVF because of the implanting of multiple embryos,” he said.
“The Swedish research says the way to go is to use only one embryo.
“However this will require science to develop some method of assessing which embryos are more likely to implant in the womb, because otherwise there will be a very low success rate in IVF.
“They need to able to determine which is the best embryo to establish some kind of quality control, and they will need a lot of embryos to do this research.
“And of course once they have selected the best embryo to implant in a woman, all the rest will be available for further research.”
Dr Fleming said IVF was still very “problematic” and required considerably more research, which the legislation would allow for.
Areas which needed to be studied were the culture medium, the process of transferring the embryo to the womb and the implantation rate.
“Once the embryo is in there, unless it grows a placenta which burrows into the womb nothing will develop,” he said.
“Science wants to use embryos for research to find out which ones are the most robust and likely to result in a successful pregnancy.”