Wanted: Women Willing to Risk Death So Human Cloners Can do Research

Brave New Britain is at it again. Cloning researchers have been given the right to ask women to donate eggs for use in biotechnological experiments. Before now, egg procurement for research had to be done in association with fertility or other medical treatments.

Thousands of eggs will surely be needed, for, as one of the researchers admitted, it will probably take hundreds of eggs to obtain one cloned embryonic stem cell line. Of course, that is what Hwang Wu-suk said. But it turned out he used more than 2,000 eggs and got zero cloned embryos.

The thing is, egg donation is an onerous procedure that requires super ovulation, in which high doses of hormones are injected to stimulate the ovaries to release 10-15 eggs in a cycle, instead of just one. This can be dangerous. Side effects can include death, sterility, infection, pain, and illness.

But hey: It’s all for a good cause. What’s a few sick or perhaps the occasional dead woman when it’s for the good of science (and a Nobel Prize might be at stake)?