Scientists are calling for a review of the [UK’s] 14-day rule on embryo research, saying that extending the limit could help uncover the causes of recurrent miscarriage and congenital conditions.
Until now, scientists studying the earliest stages of life have been restricted to cultivating embryos up to the equivalent of 14 days of development. They can then pick up the path of development several weeks later, on pregnancy scans and from material donated from terminations.
But this leaves a “black box” period from two to around four weeks of development that has never been directly studied.
Potential benefits include finding the causes of implantation failure, where the embryo does not embed in the womb lining causing miscarriage, and the origins of congenital heart defects, which affect about one in 100 births and are estimated to be responsible for about 40% of prenatal deaths.
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It is now more clear than it was in 1990 that an embryo does not have a functional nervous system at 28 days, but [Prof Anna Smajdor, a philosopher at the University of Oslo] said the ethics at play “are not necessarily reducible to ‘does it feel pain?’. Even without a religious perspective, it’s possible to think embryos have a moral value because they have the potential to become human beings. There is a symbolic component to it.”
