Hot Topics in Embryo Law and Ethics
This public event will discuss legal and ethical issues related to disposition of cryopreserved embryos and the development of lab-grown “embryo models” which are created from pluripotent stem cells and mimic early human embryo development.
An expert panel will discuss two complex issues at the intersection of law, medicine, and biotechnology.
For years, patients going through in vitro fertilization (IVF) have created embryos with help from fertility clinics. Unused embryos are typically cryopreserved. It is estimated that more than one million frozen embryos are stored in the United States alone. The panel will discuss the disposition of these embryos, some of which may have been long frozen or abandoned, and the complex legal and ethical questions raised.
The panel will also discuss advances in science that have enabled the development of “embryo models” from stem cells. These structures mimic, in some respects, the early development and cellular organization of early embryos but appear to lack the potential to grow into a full organism. The panel will discuss how law should regulate and ethics should guide research on these “embryo models” and how it relates to regulation of ordinary human embryos.
A recording will be made available.
This event kicks off the Petrie-Flom Center’s annual conference on Embryo Law and Ethics, held the following day on June 16. That conference, a writers-only workshop, will be livestreamed and is not open to the public.
Expert Panel
I. Glenn Cohen, Petrie-Flom Center Faculty Director, James A. Attwood and Leslie Williams Professor of Law, and Deputy Dean, Harvard Law School
Judith Daar, the Ambassador Patricia L. Herbold Dean and Professor of Law at Northern Kentucky University Chase College of Law
O. Carter Snead, the Charles E Rice Professor of Law and Concurrent Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame
Julia Hesse, Partner, Holland & Knight
Leslie Meltzer Henry, Professor of Law, University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law
Sponsored by the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School with support from the ASRM Center for Policy and Leadership and the Oswald DeN. Cammann Fund at Harvard University.