Are grafts of parts of human embryos resulting from requested legal abortions on to nude mice licit?
'Nude' mice are mammals which are congenitally incapable (for well-known biological reasons) of rejecting grafts of any tissue from any other species. It is thus possible to transplant human tissues into these animals and to study their survival or growth over long periods (one year or more). For obvious ethical reasons, the study of the development of tissues and organs of human embryos cannot be carried out directly on women during pregnancy. All experimental embryology studies are therefore carried out on other mammals. Requested legal abortions provide tissues and organs from human embryos of four to ten weeks on a daily basis. Can the grafting of parts of human embryos on to 'nude' mice be envisaged for scientific, diagnostic or therapeutic purposes? Can these transplants be left to develop and to be modified experimentally? What regulations need to be established in this new scientific domain? These questions and some initial outlines of answers are presented in this article.
Duprez
C
C
Experimental Microsurgery Laboratory, Faculty of Medicine of Nancy, France.
Duprez
A
A
D000029:Abortion, Legal; D000818:Animals; D004622:Embryo, Mammalian; D004992:Ethics, Medical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D051379:Mice; D008819:Mice, Nude; D011247:Pregnancy; D012106:Research / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D014183:Transplantation, Heterologous