Poll: 60% of Fertility Patients Would Subject Unborn Children to Research 
Email this article
Printer friendly page
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
June 21, 2007
Baltimore, MD (LifeNews.com) — A new poll conducted by researchers at Duke University Medical Center and John Hopkins University has real concerns for the pro-life community. It found that 60 percent of Americans who are fertility patients would subject their human embryos to scientific research if they weren’t going to birth them.
The poll asked patients what they would do with so-called "leftover" human embryos they had no desire to implant and give birth to in a full-term pregnancy.
The poll found that 22 percent would be interested in donating their embryos to couples who are looking for children to adopt. Pro-life advocates say that more should be done to promote the avenue.
Anne Drapkin Lyerly at Duke, talked about the study in a statement and indicated that it was published in the Science Express publication.
She appeared excited by the results and claimed that using so many of the frozen human embryos in existence would be a scientific boon.
"Previous research indicates that there are approximately 400,000 frozen embryos stored in the United States," she said. "If half of those belong to people who are willing to donate embryos for research, and only half that number were in fact donated, there could still be 100,000 embryos available for research."
Ultimately if that many human lives are taken, they would produce 2,000 to 3,000 usable stem cell lines, the researchers said — which is 100 times the number currently allowed to receive federal funding.
In the study, some 1,020 people were questions who had human embryos frozen at fertility clinics in California, Colorado, Washington, D.C., Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon and Pennsylvania.
