Babies From Skin Cells? Catholics Decry Research Breakthrough Over Human Egg Creation| National Catholic Register

Regarding the conception of human children: What if mothers could be removed from the equation?

It’s a thought experiment that points to an idea so preposterous and unnatural that it seems almost incoherent. But researchers at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland published a paper Sept. 30 chronicling a process that could lead to exactly that — human eggs created from other human cells, such as skin cells, rather than produced naturally by a woman’s body.

The research presents the first proof-of-concept of a method of manipulating skin and other human cells to mimic oocytes — eggs — through a process the researchers have termed mitomeiosis, a variant of a long-heralded process called in vitro gametogenesis (IVG).

The Oregon scientists say they managed to produce 82 human eggs, which they then fertilized using donor sperm. Most of the embryos stopped developing after just a few cell divisions, and almost all displayed genetic abnormalities that would have prevented them from ever developing further as healthy babies.

During the experiment, only a handful of the embryos grew to the stage when they could normally be transferred to a woman’s womb through in vitro fertilization (IVF). All the unborn children were ultimately destroyed as part of the study.

Paula Amato, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at OHSU and a co-author of the study, told Oregon Live that the method could one day help women who no longer produce viable eggs due to age or medical treatments, and it may even allow same-sex couples to have children that are genetically related to both partners. The technology is still in a nascent stage and is likely a decade or more away from a clinical trial, the researchers say.

Catholic bioethicists have warned of the potential dangers of IVG for years — long before the recent breakthrough in Oregon.

Because of the Church’s teaching that life begins at conception, the Church has stridently warned against technologies that “manufacture” embryos and treat them not as irreplaceable human persons, but rather as biological material to be experimented on, scrutinized and judged with a eugenic mentality, and ultimately discarded.

In a similar fashion to IVF — which has recently been strongly promoted by the Trump administration, to the consternation of Catholic leaders — IVG separates reproduction from the sexual union of a husband and wife. Though there has not been a formal pronouncement on IVG specifically, the Church has definitively judged practices of this type — including IVF and human cloning — to be immoral because of its bypassing of the sexual act. In addition, as alluded to by the Oregon researchers, IVF — and IVG, if the technology ever matures — can be used by same-sex couples to produce children through surrogacy, another practice the Church strongly condemns.

In the face of the very real cross of infertility that many couples face today, the Church instead promotes research into infertility treatments that respect human life, including adult stem-cell therapies, natural procreative technology (NaPro) and fertility education and medical management.

Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, senior ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, told the Register that although mitomeiosis is framed as a potential way for women experiencing infertility to have children, in reality it represents a complete “workaround” that does nothing to “fix” the woman’s eggs, but rather creates a new and complex artificial procedure for conceiving children, similar to — and relying heavily on — IVF.

Mitomeiosis relies on sophisticated cloning techniques, as well as IVF technologies and additional manipulations, to generate a human embryo, Father Pacholczyk explained. It relies on a donor skin cell from a woman — or man — plus a donor egg from another woman to allow for the cloning step. This process essentially creates a “three-parent embryo,” he warned.

“The technology intentionally introduces fractures into parenthood, distancing children from their parents by multiplying the number of those who feed biological materials into the procedures needed for the generation of a child,” Father Pacholczyk said in an email to the Register.

“The Catholic Church remains the singular voice in our culture today reminding us that the creation of life in glassware or petri dishes as a substitution for the marital act is always an unethical choice. … We are not meant to create new human life out of skin-cell derivatives, nor to generate human beings via novel research permutations that rely on the hijacking of eggs from other women.”

There is also a further layer of ethical murkiness introduced by the fact that the egg donors in the study received compensation ranging from $7,000 to $8,000 per donation cycle over the three-to-four-year study period. While payment for human egg donation is not uncommon today, it is unclear whether the women in the study were fully notified that their eggs would be used for the creation and destruction of numerous human embryos, Father Pacholczyk said.

“IVG and mitomeiosis extend the faulty logic of IVF by introducing additional steps to the process of manipulating the origins of the human person. These approaches cater to the desires of customers and the interests of researchers, as well as to the larger IVF industry looking to expand its business base,” he added.

Lois Anderson, executive director of Oregon Right to Life, a pro-life group active in the state, described the research as “disturbing” in a statement. According to the report, she noted, OHSU researchers “created 82 unique human lives, who had no ability to consent, for the purpose of conducting ethically fraught experimentation and then allowing them to die.”

“The report presents a bleak image of research conducted with a total lack of respect for human dignity,” Anderson said.

“We profoundly disagree with this dangerous misconception of human value and deplore its adoption by those who should be committed to saving lives rather than destroying them. … [These experiments] are deeply problematic because they treat unique and unrepeatable lives like commodities to be created and destroyed at will.”

Mary Wakefield, a Catholic commentator for the U.K.’s Spectator magazine, recently decried the technological “breakthrough” of mitomeiosis and expressed dread at the likelihood of its future use, saying it poses a serious threat to motherhood.

“[I]magine a child born of a skin cell becoming gradually aware of motherhood and the celebration of motherhood all around. ‘Where’s my mother?’ ‘You never had one,’” Wakefield wrote.

Wakefield, encouraging Pope Leo XIV and other Catholic leaders to speak out against the technology, lamented: “Who cares more about motherhood than believers in a God who was born as a baby to a human mother?”