Statement on Embryo Research

Council for Responsible Genetics Statement on Embryo Research

June 6, 2001

The Council for Responsible Genetics unequivocally supports a woman's right to make her own reproductive decisions. However, we oppose the utilization of human eggs and embryos for experimental manipulations and as items of commerce because of the potential for eugenic applications and health risks to women and their offspring.

The Council for Responsible Genetics therefore calls for a ban on the buying or selling of human eggs or embryos, and the manipulation of any and all human eggs or embryos by transfer of cells, nuclei, cytoplasm, mitochondria, chromosomes, or isolated DNA or RNA molecules of human or non-human origin.

No human embryo is to be produced solely for purposes of research.

These bans would apply whether or not the embryos are to be implanted and gestated and irrespective of the sources of funding, whether public or private.

The Council for Responsible Genetics, the nation’s oldest organization working on the implications of new genetic technologies, issued a statement today calling for a ban on certain experimental manipulations and traffic in human eggs and embryos. The ban would apply whether or not the embryos are to be implanted and irrespective of the sources of funding, whether public or private. The Council for Responsible Genetics (CRG) considers that this step must be taken in order to stem the trend in the commercialization of life.

“We reject any manipulations of embryos that could lead to genetically altered or cloned people, “ says Stuart Newman, PhD, a CRG Board Member and Professor of Cell Biology and Anatomy at New York Medical College. “This line must be drawn to protect future generations from growing up as laboratory experiments.”

“Research on embryos is pushing scientists into the morass of eugenics and the creation of people as products,” says Ruth Hubbard, PhD, one of the founding Board Members of CRG and Professor Emerita of Biology at Harvard University.

Martin Teitel, a philosopher and President of CRG adds, “No bright line exists in ethics for deciding what is helping a person and what is turning a human being into an experiment, or a product.”

The CRG, incorporated in 1983, issued the statement on human embryo experimentation as an outgrowth of its Genetic Bill of Rights, released in March 2000, which reads in part, “Manipulation of human genes creates new threats to the health of individuals and their offspring, and endangers human rights, privacy and dignity.... All people have the right to have been conceived, gestated, and born without genetic manipulation.” The full text of the CRG Statement on Embryo Research and the Genetic Bill of Rights are attached and are available also on CRG’s website: http://www.gene-watch.org/.