Wednesday, March 19, 2008

An Egg Shortage: Is More Cash the Answer?


The California stem cell agency has embarked on a sweeping review of the human egg market and the needs of researchers, some of whom are complaining that they do not have enough raw material.

The study was set in motion after Harvard scientist Kevin Eggan (see photo on left) told the CIRM Standards Working Group last month that he and his colleagues had spent $100,000 recently advertising for donors and "pursued every option" for collecting eggs with little success.

CIRM President Alan Trounson, a renown Australian stem cell scientist, said "accessing those eggs is no trivial matter." He said scientists are seeking grants from CIRM for research that may not be feasible because of the lack of human eggs.

One answer to the question of scarcity posed during last month's session is increasing the money for women who provide eggs. However, that could be considered the politically fatal "third rail" for hESC cell research. Prop. 71, which created the California stem cell agency in 2004, was approved by voters in a campaign that appeared to promise that women would not be paid for eggs. But the language of the measure is artfully ambiguous. The initiative says that it is up to CIRM directors to set
"standards prohibiting compensation to research donors or participants, while permitting reimbursement of expenses."
Currently CIRM regulations do not allow for compensation other than reimbursement of direct expenses. One suggestion that arose during the meeting of the CIRM Standards Working Group on Feb. 28 was some sort of reimbursement of expenses for women involved in IVF treatments. However, paying for IVF treatments could be construed as cash for eggs.

Not all members of the group were comfortable with the concept of paying women for eggs.

Here is an exchange from the transcript of the Feb. 28 meeting between CIRM Oversight Committee member Jeff Sheehy and CIRM Chairman Robert Klein, who led the campaign for Prop. 71 and claims responsibility for writing it:

Sheehy:
"(Prop. 71) was approved by the voters because the voters thought there wasn't going to be compensation for egg donors when they voted for it, and they didn't know we were going to go back and change it. And so in that context I think this is an issue that would be appropriate for us to study."
Klein:
"Well, I'm in a reasonably good position, Jeff, to discuss the issue of what was presented to the voters. and --
Sheehy:
"I was your average voter, Bob. I was not one of these people that was waving the stem cell flag. I can tell you that if we were going to go out and spend $3 billion buying eggs from women, I wouldn't have voted for it."
Klein:
"Certainly I wouldn't have voted for it either, so we agree. But the key here is medical reimbursement was clearly contemplated. I have gone to James Harrison (outside counsel to CIRM and who wrote portions of Prop. 71) and discussed this issue with him...."
Alta Charo(see photo on right), professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin and a member of the CIRM standards group, noted the political sensitivity of the issue of cash for eggs. She said changing the CIRM standards worked out in 2005 could be "inviting really quite draconian responses" from unspecified parties, but presumably hostile lawmakers and regulators.

What went unsaid during the Feb. 28 meeting was the fact that some have long regarded the supply of human eggs as insufficient for human embryonic stem cell research. But now that hESC research is enjoying a resurgence, the scarcity is becoming more acutely felt.

The session also did not include a direct discussion of another reality: If eggs are scarce and demand is high, somebody is going to make a business of it. It will be an unregulated business somewhere else in the world. It goes almost without saying that embryonic stem cell research is a global endeavor, a point that Klein made on Feb. 28.

The CIRM Standards meeting ended with a move to investigate the entire subject further. Bernie Lo of the University of California, San Francisco and chairman of the group, indicated the review would include availability of eggs and their numbers, researchers' perceptions of the problem, possible reimbursement of IVF treatment, use of eggs by CIRM researchers from other areas where compensation restrictions are not so tight and the grandfathering of cell lines that were derived before CIRM regulations were adopted.

The standards group will consider the staff review of the matter at some later date. We have asked CIRM when that is likely to occur.

Needless to say, this subject is complex. We have only briefly touched on a handful of issues discussed during the Feb. 28 meeting. We recommend a close read of the transcript. Most of the pertinent discussion begins on page 91.

Below are some excerpts from the transcript.

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:03 AM

    Thanks for the report on the meeting of the Standards Working Group. Some clarification is needed regarding the role of eggs in stem cell research.

    The great majority of the world's human embryonic stem cell research uses cells derived from embryos that were initially created for assisted reproduction treatments (IVF) but then not needed. No fresh eggs are needed specifically for the research, as they are supplied by the prospective biological mother for reproductive purposes.

    Some believe that stem cell lines could be derived from embryos that are specifically created for research through cloning, or somatic cell nuclear transfer. This process requires fresh human eggs. Only perhaps a dozen labs worldwide are trying, and only three or four CIRM grants have been awarded for this purpose (to my knowledge).

    This line of work raises concerns beyond the moral status of the embryo. The extraction of eggs poses significant health risks for the women who would provide them, which is the concern behind the prohibition on payments for the eggs. And the development of cloning for research would greatly increase the likelihood of cloning for reproduction.

    After almost a decade of work, stem cells have not been derived from human clonal embryos. In light of the development of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS), cloning-based stem cell research is not enjoying a resurgence. In fact, one of the world's leading cloning researchers - Ian Wilmut - abandoned such work after the development of iPS.

    For more information, see CGS's website on research cloning.

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  2. Anonymous2:39 AM

    Is that Kevin Eggans picture from his match.com profile?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Re the photo of Eggan, the answer is that it did not come from match.com.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous2:52 AM

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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