News item | 17-10-2022 | 18:15
The cabinet wants to change the current Embryo Act as a result of the third legislative evaluation from 2020. That is what Ernst Kuipers of Health, Welfare and Sport (VWS) said in a response to the House. The amendments, among other things, bring new developments in the field of embryos, which did not yet exist at the time of the old Act, under the scope of the Embryo Act. For example, embryo-like structures (ELS), cells that mimic the development of an intact human embryo, are included in the law. With this amendment, the law is once again in line with new scientific developments.
The third evaluation of the Embryo Act was carried out on behalf of VWS by ZonMw and took place in 2020. The aim of the evaluation was to gain insight into the current and future functioning of the Act. In response to the evaluation, Minister Kuipers sent a letter to the House of Representatives today containing a response to the evaluation’s recommendations and the intention to amend the law on a number of points, partly in response to the agreements made in the coalition agreement. On almost all points, Minister Kuipers will work with the recommendations from the evaluation. It has been agreed in the coalition agreement that D66 and VVD will work on a private member’s bill to lift the ban on the creation of embryos for scientific research, thereby adopting that recommendation.
The definition of ’embryo’ is being modified
The definition of embryo will be adjusted. This will also result in embryo-like structures (ELS) if they mimic an intact embryo, come under the definition of embryo. ELS are stem cell structures that mimic part or all of the development of an embryo. As a result, they can be used, for example, as model systems to investigate processes that take place in a developing embryo. If ELS that mimic an intact embryo come under the Embryo Act, research will remain possible, but the same preconditions apply as for research with embryos.
Human-animal combinations
For human-animal combinations, the basic principle advocated in the legislative evaluation is maintained that these are only regulated under the Embryo Act if there are embryos with predominantly human DNA. However, this is already the practice for most types of human-animal combinations. Only the cybrid, which is created by inserting the nucleus of a ‘normal’ human cell into an enucleated egg cell of an animal species, is currently not regulated. The same rules will apply to research with this as for research with an embryo.
Human-animal combinations with predominantly animal DNA do not fall under the Embryo Act. Research with these human-animal combinations will be regulated by means of two laws: the Animal Experiments Act (WOD) and the Body Material Control Act (Wzl); the latter is currently being discussed in the House of Representatives.
Health Council advises on 14-day limit
Legally, an embryo may not be developed outside the body for more than two weeks at this time. In practice, it was not possible until now to allow human embryos to develop outside the human body for longer than a maximum of one week. However, based on recent developments, it seems plausible that it will be possible in the foreseeable future to allow human embryos to continue to grow for longer, even beyond the current legal limit of fourteen days. The question therefore arises as to whether moving the so-called fourteen-day limit is desirable and acceptable. For this reason, the Health Council has been asked to advise on the desirability and acceptability of moving this fourteen-day limit to twenty-eight days.