6 Ethics for Embryologists 147Tricky Situations
To begin, we consider those aspects of IVF technology that are most fre-
quently cited as ‘troubling’ or ‘controversial’ techniques. These are often
the focus of sporadic public consultation in New Zealand in order to
develop ongoing guidelines for use. The ‘sporadic’ nature is the result of
ACART’s (Advisory Committee on Assisted Reproductive Technology)
role to provide advice to the Minister of Health on these issues as well
as reviewing existing guidelines and providing advice to ECART (the
Ethics Committee on Assisted Reproductive Technology). ECART
explores actual practice issues in HART where specific ethical issues are
raised from various laboratories. Consultation can also be instituted by
media hype surrounding unusual or new uses of the technology such as
the widely reported request, in 2002, by deaf partners Duschesneau and
McCullough to be allowed to use PGD during their IVF treatment to
select for an embryo with heritable deafness (BBC News 2002 ). Traces
of this controversy appear in the New Zealand ACART ethical guide-
lines as an example of undesirable uses of PGD (see Fitzgerald et al.
(2013a) for a more extended discussion). While the public may debate
the ethics of such uses, scientists working within the reputable and legal
laboratory environments of New Zealand must implement the outcome
of such public debate regardless of how they themselves consider the
issues on a personal level. The only other option is to leave one’s job,
as in the case for one worker in disagreement with a changed policy to
provide IVF to single women.
There were several ‘tricky’ issues that arose through scientists’ routine
labours that required workers to develop their own particular lines of
ethical reasoning to accommodate and rationalise the uses of their spe-
cialist skills. Intergenerational transfer of gametes was an area that some
people took issue with, as one worker commented:
[then there was] the case of the daughter who donated her eggs to the
mother – I meant that was a bit funny [strange] ahh when the baby’s born