More on Embryos

Robyn Stent, the former Health and Disability Commissioner, adds an interesting twist to the tale of the IVF embryos in cold storage. Her tack is that Former Health Minister Annette King altered the wording of the HDC code of rights to allow something like this to happen. The change occurred to right 7(10):

““Any body parts or bodily substances removed or obtained in the course of a health-care procedure may be stored, preserved, or utilised only with the informed consent of the consumer …””

Stent goes on to say:

“So why did the two Labour health ministers sit on the report by the advisory committee to commence “beneficial health research”? The answer lies in a decision by an earlier Health Minister, Annette King, who altered the code in 2004 under section 75 of the act and, in doing so, gave away consumers’ rights to informed consent in the interests of so-called public benefit research.

“The change resulted in a new Right 7(10) which transfers power to researchers and providers: “No body part or bodily substance removed or obtained in the course of a health-care procedure may be stored, preserved or used otherwise than (a) with the informed consent of the consumer; or (b) for the purpose of research that has received the approval of an ethics committee; or (c) for the purpose of a professionally recognised quality assurance programme or an external audit or evaluation of services that is undertaken to assure or improve the quality of services.””

Firstly, let me say that I support the right of people to have a say in the disposal of their body parts and I think that the correct thing for the IVF clinics to have done with the extra embryos is to have planned eventual disposal of the unwanted embryos upfront at the time of extraction. Annette King changed right 7(10) because it could be made to apply to storage of samples for legal purposes (quality assurance programs, mostly) and to properly conducted ethical research. Note that the vast majority of ethical medical research will obtain consent, but occasionally this is not practicable – as with the use of the stored embryos and the use of heel-prick blood from heel-prick cards. Quality assurance is usually conducted in house by the doctor who removed the body part and his colleagues. “Body part” in this case almost always means a microscopic slide of series of slides, rather than the whole part.

Stent’s assertion that the problem with the stored embryos has been caused by King’s wise change of the right, is completely wrong. Firstly, the storage of the embryos was not conducted with any part of the right in mind. The consent of the donors for disposal was not obtained. No research was envisaged. No quality assurance was planned. The embryos were originally stored in case they were need for another attempt at IVF and for no other purpose. Right 7(10) does not apply here at all.

In addition, calling an embryo a “body part” is really stretching the definition. I know it is fashionable to pro-choicers to intimate that the embryo/foetus is just another part of the mother, but this argument is clearly utter nonsense. The embryo has a different genetic structure from the mother and cannot be considered a body part under any medical definition I know of. Also, unlike most body parts, an embryo will eventually become a distinct separate entity. 

So I think Robyn Stent is wrong. If anything, Annette King’s change to right 7(10) has made resolution of the embryo dilemma much easier, as they can be used for medical research under part (b). You can see my previous post on this issue for my reasoning for their use in medical research.

Hat Tip: Kiwiblog

Related posts: