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テキサス州のAbraham Center of Lifeは，この６月，体外受精用にカスタムメイドの胚を提供する初のヒト胚銀行を設置した。注文に応じて健康で知性の高いドナーの精子と卵子を授精させ，顧客に提供する。要望があれば代理母の斡旋もするという。

ついに出たか……という感じですね。ドナーへの謝金はどうなっているのだろう。精子ドナーはまだしも，「卵子」は自分の体外受精用に卵子を取り出したドナーが使わなかった“余剰の”未授精卵なんだろうか……など，いろいろと気になります。

下記は，本件をわたしが知ったBioEDGEのWeekly Newsletter -- Tuesday, 8 August 2006 -- Number 213 の記事です。この記事によると，胚の提供料金は２個につき１万ドルだそうです。

MAIL ORDER EMBRYOS

From Texas, the state where Michael Dell pioneered custom-built
computers, come custom-built embryos. Commercialisation of the IVF
process has achieved a new milestone with the world's first embryo
bank at an innovative adoption agency in San Antonio. The Abraham
Center of Life allows people to order custom-made embryos and have
them shipped to an IVF clinic for implantation.

The embryos are created with the eggs and sperm of rigorously
screened, "qualified" donors who have never met each other.
Conception occurs as the embryo bank fills its orders. Customers can
even specify the eye and hair colour that they would like their baby to
have.

Jennalee Ryan, the director, says that her program is superior to
both normal adoption and "adopting" surplus embryos in IVF clinics.
Babies offered for adoption tend to come from lower class women, she
says, who often have a history of drug or alcohol abuse. IVF embryos
come from couples with fertility problems and the pregnancy rate is,
at best, about 30%. Furthermore, adopting couples may have to deal
with vexatious genetic parents. Often an adopting couple has to jump
through hoops to prove that they will be good parents.

This new system skirts all these problems, offering a high
probability of intelligent, healthy babies, without any interference
from the biological parents. Most of her sperm donors have PhDs and
most egg donors have had some tertiary education. All donors are
medically screened and the medical quality of embryos is graded.
With "proven" donors, the success rate for a pregnancy is around
70%, compared to IVF rates of about 30%. The centre can arrange for
qualified surrogate mothers, if necessary. However, Ms Ryan told the
London Daily Mail that most clients on her waiting list were
not fussy about the characteristics of their embryos. They were
happy just to get a child.

Like Dell's computers, the other advantage of buying embryos through
the Abraham Center of Life is price. At about half the cost of
adoption, it is "a cost-effective, highly successful option to
infertility", says Ms Ryan. For US$10,000, customers will get two embryos.

Ms Ryan acknowledged that there was some opposition to custom-built
embryos, especially from religious groups. "But what I say to them is
Jesus was not conceived in the normal way either. I don't lose any sleep
over what we are doing. I feel what we are doing is positive. We are
helping couples and putting good genes back into the universe."

The US media, for some reason, has largely ignored this novel
business, despite a Ms Ryan's press release. However, Josephine
Quintavalle of the British lobby group Comment on Reproductive
Ethics, told the Daily Mail that it represented the "absolute
commercialisation of human life... It is heartbreaking to see
children reduced in this way to the equivalent of a special offer
supermarket commodity: cut price, tailor-made human embryos,
complete with door-to-door delivery."

Even utilitarian bioethicist Arthur Caplan, of the University of
Pennslyvania, was revolted by Ms Ryan's entrepreneurial plans. "How
do we get to the point where you go to jail if you go up to someone
on the street and say, 'Do you want to buy my child for $10,000?'
You'd think they were barbaric, immoral heinous people. But if they
come down the street and say, 'Hey, there's an Internet site. Do you
want to buy an egg, sperm and surrogate mother?' We think they're
just entrepreneurs. What's going on here?" ~ Daily Mail, Aug 4