24 
Monitoring Stem Cell Research 
adopted the recommendation in 1975, established an Ethics 
Advisory Board, and put in place regulations requiring that the 
Board provide advice about the ethical acceptability of IVF 
research proposals. The Board first took up the issue of re- 
search on in vitro embryos in full in the late 1970s, and issued 
its report in 1979.^ 
By that time, human IVF techniques had been developed 
(first in Britain) to the point of producing a live-born child (born 
in 1978). These techniques, and their implications for human 
embryo research, raised unique prospects and concerns that 
were distinct from some of those involved in human fetal re- 
search. As a consequence, starting in the late 1970s funding of 
embryo research and funding of fetal research came to be 
treated as mostly distinct and separate issues. The Ethics 
Advisory Board concluded that research involving embryos 
and IVF techniques was “ethically defensible but still legiti- 
mately controverted." Provided that research did not take 
place on embryos beyond fourteen days of development and 
that all gamete donors were married couples, the Board ar- 
gued, such work was “acceptable from an ethical standpoint," 
but the Board decided that it “should not advise the Depart- 
ment on the level of Federal support, if any," such work should 
receive. 
This left the decision in the hands of the DHEW, which de- 
cided at that stage not to offer funding for human embryo 
studies. The Ethics Advisory Board’s charter expired in 1980, 
and no renewal or replacement was put forward, creating a 
peculiar situation in which the regulations requiring the Ethics 
Advisory Board to review proposals for funding remained in 
effect, but the Board no longer existed to consider such re- 
quests. Funding was therefore rendered impossible in prac- 
tice. Because the Ethics Advisory Board was never replaced, a 
de facto ban on funding remained in place through the 1980s. 
In 1993, Congress enacted the NIH Revitalization Act, a 
provision of which rescinded the requirement that research 
protocols be approved by the non-existent Ethics Advisory 
Board.^ This change opened the way in principle to the possi- 
bility of NIH funding for human embryo research using IVF 
embryos in utero. Its separate consideration of embryo research was there- 
fore directed at in vitro embryos. 
PRE-PUBLICATION VERSION 
