CHICAGO - All Alison Miller and Todd Parrish wanted was to become parents. But when a fertility clinic didn't preserve a healthy embryo they had hoped would one day become their child, they sued for wrongful death.
A judge refused to dismiss their case, ruling in effect that a test-tube embryo is a human being and that the suit can go forward.
Though legal experts said the ruling is likely to be overturned, some in the fertility business worry it threatens everything from in vitro fertilization to abortion rights and embryonic stem cell research.
"If the decision stands, it could essentially end in vitro fertilization," said Dr. Robert Schenken, president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. Few doctors would offer the procedure if accidents that harmed the embryos could result in wrongful death lawsuits, said Schenken, chairman of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Texas in San Antonio.
He said the society, a professional group for fertility doctors, is considering filing a court brief opposing Friday's ruling by Cook County Judge Jeffrey Lawrence.
The lawyer for the clinic, James Kopriva, declined to say if an appeal is planned. "We are weighing our options. We disagree with the court's decision and do not believe Illinois law provides for the remedy provided by the court," he said.
In a letter to the couple in June 2000, Dr. Norbert Gleicher, director of the Center for Human Reproduction, said an employee had failed to put an embryo in frozen storage and he apologized for "this oversight."
If the ruling for the couple holds, it would have no legal standing outside Illinois. However, it could provide impetus for opponents of abortion rights and stem cell research, said Northwestern University law professor Victor Rosenblum, an abortion foe who has worked with antiabortion activists.
"I certainly admire the initiative of the Cook County judge in taking this step," but it likely will not survive any appeals attempts, Rosenblum said.
The judge refers in his ruling to an Illinois statute that implies that wrongful death lawsuits can be filed on behalf of the unborn regardless of age. In Lawrence's interpretation, that includes a test tube embryo before pregnancy - the microscopic bunch of cells that form after an egg is fertilized in the laboratory but before being implanted into the womb.
There are nearly half a million such embryos frozen at fertility clinics nationwide. They are typically extras produced through in vitro fertilization, and most clinics keep them indefinitely until couples decide to use them or authorize their disposal, said University of Minnesota ethicist Jeffrey Kahn.
Kahn said if the decision stands, "it will have implications not only for embryonic stem cell research, but for all of reproductive medicine, potentially."
Dolly creator gets human cloning license in Britain
LONDON - The scientist who attracted the world's attention by cloning Dolly the Sheep is about to take another major step for medical research: cloning human embryos and extracting stem cells to unravel the mysteries of muscle-wasting illnesses like Lou Gehrig's disease.
Ian Wilmut was granted a cloning license Tuesday by British regulators to study motor neuron diseases.
The experiments do not involve creating cloned babies, but abortion opponents and other biological conservatives have condemned the decision.
"Are we supposed to be appeased by professor Wilmut's declarations that the human embryos will be destroyed after experimentation?" asked Julia Millington of the London-based ProLife Alliance.
The license is the second approved since Britain became the first country to legalize research cloning in 2001.
The first was granted in August to a team that hopes to use cloning to create insulin-producing cells for transplant into diabetics.
