New York takes proactive approach to ART
New York takes proactive approach to ART
Recommendations for reproductive technology
The timing was merely coincidental, but a recent court ruling and the publication of a task force report in New York helped focus national attention on the assisted reproductive technology (ART) arena.
The New York State Task Force on Life and the Law in Albany released a series of recommendations for public policy in April titled Assisted Reproductive Technologies: Analysis and Recommen dations for Public Policy. Just a month later, the state's Court of Appeals handed down a landmark ruling on the disposition of frozen embryos.
The report follows two previous task force reports on reproductive technology. In 1987, the New York state legislature, which was considering four bills on the practice of surrogate parenting, asked the task force to develop recommen dations for public policy on the issue. A year later, the 24-member task force made a unanimous recommendation to enact legislation prohibiting commercial surrogacy and declaring all surrogate parenting contracts void and unenforceable. The legislation was passed in 1992.
In 1988, recommendations for the practice of semen donor screening were included in a study of organ/tissue procurement and distribution. Subsequent legislation led the state's health department to adopt regulations for facilities involved in all aspects of gamete donation.
Latest report all-inclusive
In addition to investigating ethical debates about infertility and its treatment in its most current analysis, the task force also makes recommendations in the following areas:
o current dilemmas in clinical practice;
o patient screening and selection;
o gamete and embryo donation;
o storage and disposition of frozen gametes and embryos;
o determining parental rights/responsibilities;
o informing children of their genetic origins;
o embryo research;
o reporting information about outcomes;
o certification and licensure;
o commercial dimensions of ART.
The task force was created in 1985 by executive order and charged with recommending policy on issues raised by medical advances, including the determination of death, withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining medical treatment, organ transplantation, and ART. In all, six recommendations for legislation or regulation have been enacted into law in New York.
Highlights from the task force's recommendations for the storage and disposition of frozen gametes and embryos include the following:
o New York's gamete bank regulations should guarantee donors the right to withdraw their consent to the donation of frozen gametes until a specific individual has begun an assisted reproduction cycle relying on the availability of gametes from that donor.
o Limits on the length of storage of frozen gametes and embryos should not be adopted as a matter of state law. However, facilities offering cryopreservation should be free to adopt such limits as a matter of their own institutional policy. Any such limits should be made clear at the time gametes or embryos are frozen.
New York's gamete bank regulations should provide that no embryo may be transferred for implantation, destroyed, or used for research without the consent of the individuals with decision-making authority over the embryo. When two people have joint decision-making authority over a frozen embryo, one person's objection to transferring the embryo for implantation, destroying it, or using it for research should take precedence over the other person's consent.
The regulations should guarantee individuals the right to revise their disposition instructions; in such cases, their current wishes should take precedence over any instructions left in advance. How ever, storage facilities should abide by disposition instructions expressed in advance unless they receive notice of a change in instructions.
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