Guidelines for experiments

Press, 21 January 1982, Page 9

Guidelines for experiments

NZPA London The British Medical Association may draw up guidelines for doctors who are involved in controversial work with “test tube" babies. The association's Central Ethical Committee will meet next month to decide whether guidance should be given to doctors who may experiment with embryos.

Dr Michael Thomas, the committee’s chairman, said that an opportunity for experimentation could arise when a doctor had too many eggs to reimplant into a woman who was undergoing fertility treatment.

"It is quite common for doctors involved in this work to harvest several eggs, fertilise them outside the'womb,

and then reimplant up to three in the hope that one or more will come to term,” Dr Thomas said.

“In many instances that leaves the doctor with surplus fertilised eggs growing outside the womb and it has already been suggested in Australia that these could be kept for observation and experimentation. "The question is. where do we stop? Are we going to allow them to develop to three weeks, or eight weeks, or full term? Then you would have live babies to experiment on." Dr Thomas said that medical science had run ahead of ethics and it w’as necessary to consider whether doctors needed guidance in these unchartered areas.