The Human Embryo: Animal, Vegetable, or Test-Tube "Baby"?

The following quotation from a recent story in the lay press on life in the womb highlights how journalists use a variety of metaphors to paint a verbal picture of the stages of human embryonic development.

The first striking change is apparent four days after conception, when a 32 cell clump called the morulla (which means "mulberry" in Latin) gives rise to two distinct layers wrapped around a fluid-filled core. Now known as a blastocyst, this spherical mass will proceed to burrow into the wall of the uterus. A short time later, the outer layer of cells will begin turning into the placenta and amniotic sac, while the inner layer will become the embryo. (Nash 2002)

I suspect that this reporter's goal was to "animate" and "enliven" her story about a rather dry set of scientific facts rather than downgrade the moral status of the early stage embryo, as William P. Cheshire (2004) would like us to believe. Cheshire's assertion that the lay press distorts the public's impression of the moral status of the human embryo would have been more compelling had he disclosed his own biases and (religious?) beliefs on the subject. Based on the tone and language of the report, my guess is that he has clear, long-held views about the humanity of embryos—rather than a fuzzy, still evolving sense of the spectrum of moral implications and ethical dilemmas most of us involved in reproductive science wrestle with every day.

Having said that, I'm inclined to agree that newspaper stories probably do describe human embryos in just these terms—from raspberries to burrowing animals to spare parts—probably because the focus of most news coverage has more to do with translating into understandable terms the awe-inspiring but conceptually tedious breakthroughs in the science and practice of assisted reproduction.

If Cheshire is concerned that the lay media dumbs down or trivializes the humanity of the 5-day blastocyst, then he should breathe a sigh of relief when he views the full-color advertisements in the medical journals for the various devices and instruments used in the fertility industry. For the last few years I have collected these ads and shared them with my students: images of test-tube babies are everywhere—not of wet, skinny newborns, but more like cherubic, chubby six-month-olds sitting in the bottom of petri dishes or suspended in chemical droplets. One culturally sensitive advertisement includes Asian and African-American infants in the mix of microbabies about to be covered by a glass cover. The language in these ads is even more telling: "impress your embryos" one says, boasting of its superior claims for its cryopreservative.

Add to this covert campaign for promised babyhood the standard practice of providing "baby's" first ultrasound portrait as a newly implanted embryo following in vitro fertilization (IVF) transfer. Clearly the personification of 32-cell embryos has been firmly established in the hearts and minds of IVF practitioners and patients. At the 2003 annual meeting of the American Society for Assisted Reproduction, Nachtigall and colleagues (2003) described results of their study of parents' conceptualizations of their frozen embryos. Not only did interviewees conceptualize their embryos as symbols of infertility and genetic or psychological "insurance policies," but they also saw them as "virtual" children in need of protection and living entities with the capacity to experience discomfort and even suffering. It is no wonder that upwards of hundreds of thousands of these "surplus" embryos are now stored by guilt-ridden, ambivalent couples for years on end. Cheshire should rest easy.

Nancy King Reame, M.S.N., Ph.D., is the Rhetaugh Graves Dumas Professor of Nursing and Health Care Systems and Research Scientist in the Reproductive Sciences Program at the University of Michigan. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine.