A human embryo has survived for 13 days inside a laboratory, just one day short of the legal limit. No one has ever been this close, and this has sparked an ethical debate on the 14-day legal limit.
Scientists have never been able to keep a test tube fertilized embryo beyond nine days, but seven days was common, The Guardian reported. Seven days is normally when the fetus implants itself in the womb.
Two groups of scientists removed the human embryos' outer membrane and then grew them in two different types of culture media, according to Science Mag. The embryos implanted onto a transparent substrate. Their work was published in Nature and in Nature Cell Biology.
New Record Set for Keeping Lab-Grown Human Embryos Alive https://t.co/esSbzQVRVl pic.twitter.com/9rPebz6btU
— Futurism (@futurism) May 4, 2016
Lab-Grown Human Embryos And The 14-Day Rule
The two teams of scientists in the United States and the United Kingdom that grew human embryos for 13 days only stopped in deference to the legal limit. The Guardian said that the 14-day rule is recognized in at least twelve countries.
The 14-day legal limit is associated with biological changes in the human embryo. The rule was put in place during the 1980s because it was determined to be the point when individuality is assigned, according to The Independent.
Lab-Grown Human Embryos Promising For Science But Raises Ethical Questions
"We can now, for the very first time, study human development at this very critical stage of our lives, at the time of implantation," said Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz via The Independent. Zernicka-Goetz headed the United Kingdom team at Cambridge University.
Zernicka-Goetz acknowledged the ethical questions that were raised by what they have accomplished, specifically on what the limits should be. "I think this is really not my place to say, one way or the other," Zernicka-Goetz said.
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