Washington

The health impacts of techniques used for assisted reproduction should be investigated in a comprehensive study supported by the federal government, according to a report by advisers to President George Bush.

The study would examine whether assisted reproduction is associated with higher rates of health ailments in children, such as genetic abnormalities and birth defects, as has been suggested by some smaller assessments (see Nature 422, 656–658; 200310.1038/422656a).

The call comes amid growing concern in the United States about the rapidly expanding and largely unregulated assisted-reproduction industry. During the past 25 years, a million couples have borne children through such techniques. Pressure is building for Congress to regulate some aspects of the industry, such as the fact that new techniques do not require regulatory approval before being used in patients.

On 30 March, the President's Council on Bioethics, chaired by University of Chicago ethicist Leon Kass, issued a report on the topic — Reproduction and Responsibility: The Regulation of New Biotechnologies.

The report recommends that a more extensive investigation into the health effects of assisted reproduction should be incorporated into the National Children's Study (NCS), a major study of child health that has been in preparation since 2000.

Peter Scheidt, a paediatrician at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development who directs the NCS, says that the study will almost certainly address assisted reproduction if it receives funding. But last month, an advisory committee to the child health agency warned that the NCS's sample population of 100,000 children would probably not be enough to tell whether assisted reproduction contributes to rare abnormalities.

The council's report also said that the government should study the health of egg donors and those who give birth to children through assisted reproduction. And it recommends that professional societies and the government should more tightly regulate the medical practice of assisted reproduction.

The bioethics council's work is always controversial, and this most recent report is no exception. At the council's meeting on 1 April, one of its members, endocrinologist Daniel Foster, questioned whether the removal of cell biologist Elizabeth Blackburn last month — and her replacement by non-scientists — would skew the council (see Nature 428, 4; 200410.1038/428004b). “There is a concern that there is now going to be an imbalance,” Foster says.

And although the report took no position on whether human embryos should be cloned to produce stem cells, some council members expressed concern that lawmakers might use the report to argue for a ban. In a personal statement appended to the report, council member Janet Rowley, a cell biologist at the University of Chicago, warned that she believed Congress might use some of the options outlined in the report “to do real damage to beneficial research and medical treatment”.

Scientists' advocacy groups reacted cautiously to the report. “There is much in this report we can support,” said Marian Damewood, president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, in a statement. “The call for follow-up on outcomes of children conceived with the use of reproductive technologies is very timely.”