Although there had been worldwide shock and dismay over the recent destruction in England of 3,300 (or more) abandoned embryos conceived through in-vitro fertilization (IVF), its pretty well open season on the tiny humans in Canada.

There are currently no laws governing IVF in this country, thanks mainly to the reluctance of former federal Health Minister Diane Marleau to enact mandatory guidelines on new reproductive technologies. Her inaction came following the completion of a four-year, $28 million royal commission into the issue last year.

Marleau decided to allow reproductive scientists to police themselves by issuing a series of voluntary curbs. As it stands now, “extra” embryos conceived through IVF are frozen and can be stored indefinitely (whereas in England the policy has been to destroy them after five years).

Marleau admitted just before leaving the health portfolio earlier this year that the voluntary guidelines were completely ineffective. The federal government has since tabled the Human Reproductive and Genetic Technologies Act, which restricts 13 practices including sex selection, the buying and selling of eggs, sperm and embryos and maintaining an embryo inside an artificial womb.

3,000 in storage

The situation has deteriorated to the point where the Foothills Regional Fertility Clinic in Calgary, which started freezing embryos in 1989, now has 3,000 of them in storage. Director Dr. Cal Greene is calling for permission to put them up for adoption.

“If you have embryos that someone wants to donate and an infertile couple that would like to be the recipient, that has always made sense to me,” he said. “It would be my view that those couples that created those embryos own those embryos and should be able to do with them what they will.”

Although no law governs embryo donation anyway, legislation to formally allow it is currently before Parliament. Greene’s proposal is going before a reproductive committee at Foothills Hospital and embryos could be available to prospective adoptive parents by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, the Canada Conference of Catholic Bishops said while it has no comment to make on the British situation, it is continuing to emphasize the value of pre-born life.

“What is clear about the bishops’ position is that human life is to be respected from the very beginning, which is even before it reached the stage of the embryo,” said Jennifer Leddy, co-director of the Catholic Organization for Life and the Family at the CCCB.

“The Conference has not had to make an official statement in regard to the situation in England,” said Bede Hubbard, the CCCB’s assistant general secretary.

“Certainly, as any Catholic institution it laments the fact that society is even making these experiments.” Hubbard added the CCCB is in dialogue with the federal health ministry on reproductive issues. “we informed the government we have a number of concerns about so-called new reproductive technologies.”

Archbishop Francis J. Spence, president of the CCB, wrote a letter to federal Health Minister David Dingwall in June congratulating him for introducing the legislation prohibiting the 13 new technologies.

“The prohibition of 13 dehumanizing and unacceptable uses of reproductive and genetic technologies shows profound respect for human life and dignity and the value of Canadians,” said Spence. “while we welcome the willingness of the government to set boundaries in this rapidly developing field, we ask you to go further and ban any marketing of fetal tissue and all human zygote or embryo research from the time of conception and not only after 14 days.”

The Anglican Church of Canada issued an official statement on frozen human embryos in November 1993, in which it called for the creation of a regulatory agency to oversee practise and experimentation in new reproductive technologies. The statement was based on a report composed by Phyllis Creighton, a historian and Anglican Church ethicist for more than 20 years. I her report, Creighton warned against treating embryos as objects, calling it “morally repugnant. To create and embryo solely fore adult consumption is to deny it intrinsic value…”

Creighton differed with Bernard Dickens, a University of Toronto bio-ethicist who had said the “planned wastage” oh human embryos through experimentation raises no legal questions if the owners consent to it and it is ethically acceptable if the purpose is “the perceived benefit and health of others”