'Surplus' IVF embryos implanted into fake uteruses, destroyed after two weeks

Last week, MIT Technology Review shared details of ongoing research in China that involves taking embryos created via IVF and placing them inside a microfluidic chip, allowing them to implant and further develop before destroying them.

Key Takeaways:

• New research out of China involves implanting human embryos into "organoids" to watch them develop over 14 days to understand more about implantation and the first communications between embryo and mother.

• While an "organoid" cannot be "pregnant," at least 50 real, living human embryos were used for the experiment. Each was a human life created by adults who wanted to have children, but were now deemed "surplus" and disposable because the adults no longer want them.

• Research like this continues to push the limits of human experimentation as well as the parameters that define who is considered human and who is not.

• The ever-changing rules may soon give way to changes that would allow experimentation on preborn babies.

The Details:

Writing for MIT Technology Review, Antonio Regalado, begins, "At first glance, it looks like the start of a human pregnancy: A ball-shaped embryo presses gently into the receptive lining of the uterus and then grips tight, burrowing in as the first tendrils of a future placenta appear."

"This is implantation—the moment that pregnancy officially begins."

While this "organoid," in which the human embryo has been placed, can't be "pregnant," this is a real, living human embryo who is doing what human beings have been designed to do since human life first came into existence. By her own effort, she is implanting in (what is mimicking) the uterine lining of her mother, and then growing. This isn't the "moment that pregnancy officially begins," but it is a moment in which a human being is treated as a disposable object. This human life began at the moment sperm was combined with egg. It was in that moment that a new human life began, but was prevented from growing, left frozen in time. Now, her life exists inside a fake uterus and will end abruptly all in the name of knowledge.

It was in 1965 that the pro-abortion American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) redefined "conception" to mean implantation rather than fertilization. This was later adopted by U.S. federal policy for research and funding to allow for human experimentation in the earliest stages of life, but it was never based on science. It was based on money and population control. It allowed research into human embryos and their subsequent destruction, allowed the justification for birth control that prevents the implantation of new human life after fertilization, and opened the door to the societal acceptance and legalization of abortion, IVF, and human embryo grading, testing, and labeling.

Now, researchers from China are putting living human embryos into microfluidic chips to watch them grow and then destroying them. This is what can happen to "surplus" embryos created as a treatment for an adult's infertility or because adults wanted to "test" their babies for certain traits (health, eye color, IQ) before allowing them to be born.

"In three papers published this week by Cell Press, scientists are reporting what they call the most accurate efforts yet to mimic the first moments of pregnancy in the lab," wrote Regalado. "They’ve taken human embryos from IVF centers and let these merge with 'organoids' made of endometrial cells, which form the lining of the uterus."

The goal is to improve IVF outcomes — increase the chances that chosen embryos will survive. The means to that end is to allow "extra" human embryos to live and grow in a fake uterus for 14 days and then kill him. However, while the 14-day rule has reined in what scientists are allowed to do, it is not legally binding. In 2021, the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) issued new guidelines in which it stopped endorsing the 14-day rule. Which begs the question: when will we begin to see experiments and research published on children in the third month of pregnancy, or in the last?

Why it Matters:

Those interested in pushing the limits of embryonic testing will stop at seemingly nothing. The starting point of human life can be moved by interested parties to fit the desires of those who stand to financially profit from such experimentation. And as the technology advances, the number of lives treated as disposable will continue to rise.

Wesley J. Smith for the National Review asked:

What is the limiting principle that can be applied to experimenting on unborn human beings? Is it their size? Their time in existence? Is it birth? We have been told by some bioethicists that a born baby is no different morally than a fetus, so why stop there?

He added, "This isn’t just an abstract concern. Vermont passed a law depriving every unborn human being of any and all rights." He noted that in Vermont, "A fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus shall not have independent rights..."

Smith continued, "Notice, this statutory deprivation is not connected to whether the unborn baby exists in a woman’s body. So, it has nothing to do with 'choice.' Simply put, Vermont’s law deprives all unborn life of any moral value that born people are bound to respect."

He argued that what Matteo Molè, a biologist at Stanford University, calls "the stage of in vitro implantation," will ultimately move to in vitro gestation.

"[W]hat's to stop them from pursuing it to its fullest extent?" asked Smith. "Experimenting on 3-month fetuses can teach us a lot about miscarriages, right? Ditto 6-month fetuses."

The Bottom Line:

There will always be a justification found to push embryonic research further and experiment longer. There's always more to learn about human development under the guise of protecting humanity, but at the expense of human lives.