Embryos on ice

A storage tank at a UNC fertility clinic holds five frozen embryos belonging to Tim and Kelly Jo Vancelette of Clayton.

The Vancelettes had these embryos created in 2003 to start a family when they could not conceive on their own. In 2004, their twins, Abby and Alex, were born after in vitro fertilization. In 2006, Kylie was conceived naturally.

Now the Vancelettes are faced with an increasingly common dilemma: what to do with their unused embryos.

Their choices are limited. With a ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, they have few avenues for scientific donations. They could give the fertilized eggs to another couple, they could have the embryos destroyed, or they could freeze them.

For now, they're freezing them. The Vancelettes think they may want one more child, though they probably won't need five embryos for that. The couple frequently talks about their options, especially when they get the $250 storage bill each year. So far, they have not come up with a good solution.

Like thousands of other couples who go through in vitro fertilization each year, the Vancelettes have decided not to decide. They've reluctantly found themselves at the center of an explosive political and moral debate about the status of embryos -- one that pits President Bush and two of the nation's largest religious groups against a majority of Americans who favor using human embryos to develop cures for diseases.

"You go into it thinking 'I want a baby,' not 'I will have all these moral and ethical issues,' " said Kelly Jo Vancelette, who adds that she would seriously consider donating to science.

A 2002 study by the RAND Corp. estimated that 400,000 frozen embryos are stored in the nation's fertility clinics. Given that thousands more in vitro procedures have been performed since then, the number is likely to top 500,000 now.

Most of these embryos are a consequence of in vitro fertilization -- a process in which a dozen eggs are aspirated from a woman's ovaries and joined with sperm in a petri dish. Doctors harvest more eggs than needed for a single pregnancy because it may take several tries before an embryo implants in the uterus.

Remaining embryos are stored in liquid nitrogen at minus 321 degrees Fahrenheit as couples wrestle with the so-called "disposition decision." Increasingly, many couples choose to bank them.

"People have trouble letting go," said Dr. Stan Beyler, lab director at UNC's Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility Clinic. "They don't want to have any more kids. They don't want to have the embryos destroyed. They don't want to give them to anyone else. So they're in limbo."

Donations for research

A recent study by researchers from Duke University and Johns Hopkins University found that given a choice, 60 percent of patients who had undergone in vitro fertilization would like to donate unused embryos to stem cell research. Stem cells from embryos can form into any cell of the body, holding promise for combating Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injuries and stroke.

But few places across the country do stem cell research. In part, that's because there's no federal funding for it. Bush has twice vetoed legislation that would provide federal money for stem cell research on grounds that it would destroy the embryo, which he views as destroying human life.

While a handful of states went ahead and appropriated money for such research -- the North Carolina legislature is weighing such a move -- actual lab studies on embryonic stem cells are scattered and few.