Dr. David Armstrong, scientific director of the test-tube clinic at the University of Western Ontario, does not appear to know how rapidly life develops.
In an interview with Rose Dimanno of the Toronto Star on February 12, Dr. Armstrong defended his recommendation that human embryos be mass-produced and kept up to 28 days for experiments because, he said “up to 28 days, they’re still at the four-cell stage.”
Armstrong made his recommendation at a recent meeting of the Medical Research Council’s Standing Committee on Medical Ethics in Experimentation. The Committee is revising its 1978 guidelines on what constitutes ethical research, current guidelines do not mention embryo experimentation at all. The MRC, whose annual budget is $156 million, funds 56 per cent of medical research in Canada.
He also told the Star that his clinic had done some experiments using “chromosomically abnormal” embryos. “We have cultured them – grown them in a tissue culture dish,” he said, to study the process. The reporter added that “after a few days, these abnormal embryos are discarded.” Justifying embryo experimentation, Armstrong remarked that “they’re not potential human beings until they’re transferred back into the womb.”
This news story appeared as the March issue of The Interim was going to press, it will be followed up in more detail next month. However, a cursory look through a couple of textbooks shows that fetal development is much more rapid than Dr. Armstrong suggests.
Dr. Margaret Liley and Beth Day wrote in 1966, “Once the new cell of life has been created, it immediately begins to divide…Within a few weeks the first two cells have increased to a cluster of more than one hundred cells, which are held together by the membrane that bounds the original egg.” (The Secret World of the Baby.) The same time-frame of development was also noted by G. L. Flanagan in her 1962 book, The First Nine Months of Life.
Implantation (that is, when the embryo attaches itself to the inner lining of the womb) occurs within 5-7 days of conception.
