Progress In Growing Human Embryo Outside The Womb Fuels Debate

The human embryo has been created and studied in labs, but scientists have not been able to keep it alive outside a woman's womb. The short lifespan outside the womb has prevented any research into its development.

Scientists now claim that they have found a way to keep embryos alive in labs a week longer. It would help experts to become aware of various aspects of evolution, human development, miscarriages and birth defects.

"All of this research which we do in the lab should have enormous benefit," said Magdelena Zernicka-Goetz, a professor at the University of Cambridge who was part of the research.

However, the new findings have again stoked the debate on the ethics of human embryo experiments. Moreover, should the rules on limiting human embryo research to the first 14 days be altered? They are being argued about.

The new research was published in Nature Cell Biology today. The study is building upon Zernicka-Goetz's recent finding of how to extend the lifespan of mouse embryos in the lab. With the help of amino acids, hormones and growth factors, Zernicka-Goetz says that embryos too can get the nourishment that they would inside the mother's womb.

The team, as well as Rockefeller University researchers, said the technique was paralleled in human embryos too, which increased their lifespan in the laboratory for a week. The embryos developed in the lab in the same manner as they did in the womb. They organised themselves into the early stages of complex body structures.

"That was a big eureka moment in the lab," said Ali Brinvalou, an embryologist at Rockefeller University who participated in the research. "All the information necessary and sufficient to have the embryo move forward is already contained within that handful of cells. That was a very big surprise to us and to the field."

However, the ethics and moral issues have raging fast and furious, as expected.

"The 14-day rule has kept it pretty limited in terms of what scientists could do," said Daniel Sulmasy, a doctor, and bioethicist at the University of Chicago. "Once that goes, then it begins to sort of say: 'It's open season on human embryos. Anything goes.'

"The question has to be: 'Are there any limits to what we will do to human beings in order to gain scientific knowledge?' And then who counts as a human being?"