No ethical, medical or scientific basis for destructive embryo research

THE Irish Council for Bioethics (ICB) recently issued an opinion which recommended that frozen IVF embryos could be destroyed for research to generate human embryonic stem cell lines.

The fact that the opinion was unanimous (13-0, a rather curious degree of unanimity, given the diversity of opinion on the topic) might signal to legislators that the recommendations represent a general consensus in the academic and biomedical communities.

This is not the case, and we wish to express our strongest possible dissent from the ICB opinion with regard to destructive research on human embryos. This opinion has no sound ethical, medical or scientific basis.