Aaron D. Levine

Self-Regulation, Compensation, and the Ethical Recruitment of Oocyte Donors

HASTINGS CENTER REPORT 25 In vitro fertilization, a technique pioneered by Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe in the 1970s, first produced a healthy child in 1978. In the three decades since the birth of Louise Brown, the use of IVF has grown rapidly. In 2007, the most recent year for which data on IVF births are available, approximately 1.3 percent of children born in the United States resulted from IVF. In a typical IVF procedure, oocytes are extracted from the intended mother and fertilized by the intended father’s sperm in a petri dish. In some cases, however, infertility results from the intended mother’s inability to produce viable oocytes. In this situation, one option is for the couple to use oocytes donated by another woman. The first IVF birth using this approach occurred in Australia in 1983. Following this success, the practice spread slowly, with couples typically asking friends or relatives to serve as the oocyte donor. The nature of oocyte donation in the United States changed in 1987 when the Cleveland Clinic started its Oocyte Donation Program, the first in the country to match anonymous donors with infertile couples and to compensate the anonymous donors. The program built on existing practices with sperm donation and allowed parents to select their donor based on national origins, height, and eye color, among other attributes. Oocyte donors were paid

Identifying Under- and Overperforming Countries in Research Related to Human Embryonic Stem Cells

900 to

Policy uncertainty and the conduct of stem cell research.

1,200 for participation in the program. This compensation was offered to offset participants’ Self-Regulation, Compensation, and the Ethical Recruitment of Oocyte Donors

Tracking and assessing the rise of state-funded stem cell research

Human embryonic stem cell (hESC) science is governed by a patchwork of policies that vary both between and within countries. To assess how this atypical environment may have influenced this fields development, publication data were analyzed to evaluate the relative performance of countries in the cumulative production of hESC-related research articles versus other areas of biomedical research. Overperforming countries generally offered permissive policy environments for hESC research, while underperforming countries were characterized by protracted policy debates and ongoing uncertainty, regardless of their current policy environment.

Positioning a Scientific Community on Unproven Cellular Therapies: The 2015 International Society for Cellular Therapy Perspective

A survey of U.S. stem cell scientists shows that uncertainty following the legal challenge to the Obama Administrations hESC research policy has negative scientific and economic impacts and affects a range of stem cell scientists, not just those working with hESCs. The international implications of these results are also discussed.

The Oversight and Practice of Oocyte Donation in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada

volume 28 number 12 DeCember 2010 nature biotechnology effects of state-funded stem cell research is both timely and useful. The database that forms the basis for the analysis described here contains the title, principal investigator, institution, abstract and amount for each grant awarded by the agency overseeing stem cell research funding in these six states (Supplementary Methods). In all, between December 2005 when New Jersey awarded the first state stem cell grants and the end of 2009, the six stem cell states awarded nearly 750 grants totaling just over

Compliance with donor age recommendations in oocyte donor recruitment advertisements in the USA

1.25 billion. The scale of these programs varies substantially, ranging from the roughly

Assessing State Stem Cell Programs in the United States: How Has State Funding Affected Publication Trends?

15 million awarded by Illinois and New Jersey to the

Part 6: The role of communication in better understanding unproven cellular therapies

1.02 billion awarded by California. On a per capita basis, funding awarded through the end of 2009 ranges from just over

Access to human embryonic stem cell lines

1 in Illinois to nearly