Current Federal Law and Policy 
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creating or destroying human embryos or making use of de- 
stroyed embryos and fetuses — practices that touch directly on 
the much-disputed questions of the moral status and proper 
treatment of nascent human life. 
In the immediate aftermath of the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe 
V. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationwide, some Ameri- 
cans, including some Members of Congress, became con- 
cerned about the potential use of aborted fetuses (or embryos) 
in scientific research. In response to these concerns, the De- 
partment of Health, Education and Welfare (DHEW, the pre- 
cursor to today’s Department of Health and Human Services) 
initiated a moratorium on any potential DHEW sponsorship or 
funding of research using human fetuses or living embryos. In 
1974, Congress codified the policy in law, initiating what it 
termed a temporary moratorium on federal funding for clinical 
research using “a living human fetus, before or after the in- 
duced abortion of such fetus, unless such research is done for 
the purpose of assuring the survival of such fetus. Concur- 
rently with that moratorium (and also addressing concerns not 
directly related to embryo and fetal research). Congress estab- 
lished a National Commission for the Protection of Human 
Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research. Among its 
other tasks. Congress explicitly assigned the Commission 
responsibility for offering guidelines for human fetal and em- 
bryo research, so that standards for funding might be estab- 
lished and the blanket moratorium might be lifted. The statu- 
tory moratorium was lifted once the Commission issued its 
report in 1975.^ 
In that report, the Commission called for the establishment 
of a national Ethics Advisory Board within DHEW to propose 
standards and research protocols for potential federal funding 
of research using human embryos and to consider particular 
applications for funding. In doing so, the Commission looked 
ahead to the possible uses of in vitro embryos, since the first 
successful in vitro fertilization (IVF) of human egg by human 
sperm had been accomplished in 1969.* The Department 
* In its discussion of "fetal" research, the commission defined the fetus as 
the product of conception from the time of implantation onward, which 
therefore included what we generally think of (and define in this report) as 
PRE -PUBLICATION VERSION 
