- Some scientists suggest human embryos should be kept alive in the lab for 28 days, instead of the current legal limit of 14 days
- Lengthening the period may bring major insights into health conditions
- The proposal has sparked fury among religious groups, who believe day 14 is when someone becomes a person
Victoria Allen for the Daily Mail
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In-vitro fertilisation expert Dr Simon Fishel said doubling the limit to experiment on human embryos may help scientists to explain why women who have fertility treatment fail to become pregnant
Scientists are calling for the 14-day limit to experiment on human embryos to be doubled to 28 days.
For the first time this year, human embryos were kept alive in the laboratory for 13 days – double what was previously possible.
But some scientists want the 14-day limit to be changed.
A conference in London yesterday heard that embryos kept for 28 days, known as the ‘black box’ of clues on human development, could help scientists to understand why women miscarry or babies die from genetic defects.
But scientists risk jail if they go any further.
IVF expert Dr Simon Fishel, backing a 28-day limit for embryo research, said we know ‘more about salamanders and fruit flies’ than how human life begins.
By examining embryos kept out of a woman’s body, in a laboratory, could help explain why up to 70 per cent of women who have fertility treatment fail to become pregnant because the embryo does not implant in their womb.
But the proposal to extend the limit was rejected by Baroness Warnock, who originally advised the UK Government in 1984 to cap it at 14 days.
She said: ‘Not on scientific grounds, purely on political grounds, I hope there will be more time allowed within which the research can continue on days between five and 14.’
She warned of a potential backlash from opponents of the existing law which could set back progress, adding: ‘The minute someone can go beyond 14 days, they will say a slippery slope has come into effect.’
Baroness Warnock admitted her recommendation was somewhat ‘arbitrary’, with no real reason why embryos could not be kept for 13 or 15 days.
But the limit needed to be set in days, rather than a stage in cell development, so it could be enforced easily.
A two-day-old human embryo at four cell stage of development
However, some religious groups believe day 14 is when someone becomes a person, as this is the point at which an embryo can no longer split into twins.
In a debate held by the Progress Educational Trust in London, David Jones, a visiting professor of bioethics at St Mary’s University Twickenham, called destroying an embryo after research an act of ‘homicide’.
But Dr Fishel, founder of CARE Fertility, said examining embryos for 28 days would allow scientists to understand how stem cells with the ability to become any part of the body turn into these differential cells – whether normally or abnormally.
He said: ‘Those two areas are really important for understanding human health.
‘This critical information could probably satisfy us for the next 40 years of medical science from that particular period of time.’
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In response to the scientific belief that 14 days is the point at which the precursor of the central nervous system, the ‘primitive streak’, begins to form, he said the evidence suggests embryos kept for up to 28 days experience no pain or suffering.
Dr Fishel’s 28-day proposal has also been backed by Professor Robin Lovell-Badge of the Francis Crick Institute.
The debate has been reignited since the 14-day limit became law in 1990, as scientists have come close to it for the first time.
Scientists from Cambridge University were announced in May to have more than doubled the amount of time an embryo is kept alive outside its mother’s body from six to 13 days, using a soup of chemicals.
Even in a laboratory, these embryos showed early signs of being able to form a placenta and body parts, making them suitable for research.
Research leader Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz appeared at the conference and said: ‘Extending it for one week would be a giant leap for science and society – the question is when to do it.’
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