Lack of Infertility Study Funds Hit : Health: Congressional report attributes scarcity of federal money to controversy over in-vitro fertilization. It also cites pressure of abortion foes.

Pressure from the anti-abortion movement has thwarted federal funding for research into in-vitro fertilization and other methods used to assist infertile couples, according to a congressional report released Saturday.

The report, compiled by the House Government Operations subcommittee on human resources and intergovernmental relations, accused the Department of Health and Human Services of ignoring the “major health problem” of infertility for more than a decade.

It attributed the lack of funding to the potential controversy associated with in-vitro, or “test-tube,” fertilization, a procedure in which eggs are extracted from a woman’s ovaries, fertilized in a glass dish and implanted in the womb.

In-vitro fertilization is opposed by abortion opponents because some human embryos may be destroyed during the procedure. “Tens of thousands of human embryos (are) being poured down the drain like so much garbage,” Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N. J.) testified at a committee hearing.

The Bush Administration, like the Ronald Reagan Administration before it, has declared its opposition to abortion. It has used a job candidate’s views on abortion as a “litmus test” of eligibility for such high government positions as secretary of health and human services and surgeon general.

Similarly, HHS has announced that it will extend indefinitely a ban on federal funding of research using fetal tissue, almost all of which is obtained as a result of abortion.

The congressional report, quoting Dr. Robert Stillman of George Washington University Medical School, insists that “the right-to-life issue here is the right of infertile couples to bring life--as their offspring--into this world.”

Subcommittee Chairman Ted Weiss (D-N.Y.) said infertile couples “are spending their life savings on treatment that doesn’t work because the federal government has not been willing to study infertility treatment the way it studies treatment for every other disease.

“It is outrageous,” Weiss said, “that our national health agency has ignored the repeated pleas of their own scientists, the medical and scientific communities, and millions of infertile Americans who have repeatedly asked them to fund this research.”

In a dissenting report, five of the 39 members of the Government Operations Committee said that objections to in-vitro fertilization are based on more than religious tenets or misunderstandings about the procedures involved.

“In addition to religious beliefs that say life begins at conception, many people feel there is strong scientific and philosophic reasons for believing this as well,” the five House members stated.

“Respect for human life means having respect for frozen embryos, and seriously considering if they have rights which should be protected,” they said.

The dissenters questioned whether the government should fund infertility research in the face of competing priorities, such as AIDS research.

Jim Brown, a spokesman for the Public Health Service, a unit of HHS, declined to discuss why the department has failed to support infertility research. “We have not seen the report and we will not comment on it,” he said.

The report said that 2.4 million American couples who want to have a child either need medical help to do so or will need to seek other options.

Although the overall incidence of infertility has not changed for the last 20 years, the report said that infertility among couples in which the woman is 20 to 24 years of age has jumped from 3.6% to 10.6%. It attributed the increase to a higher incidence of sexually transmitted diseases that cause infertility, such as gonorrhea and chlamydia.

During the last 10 years, in-vitro fertilization “has changed from a rarely used technique to an established medical procedure,” the report said. “Despite its widespread use, however, research is needed to improve (its) efficacy. Only 6% of initial IVF procedures result in the birth of a baby.”

The major objection to the procedure is that embryos that are not implanted are often frozen for future use, and a large percentage of these embryos do not survive the freezing and thawing process. Additional research is needed to improve the success ratio, the report said, and to develop techniques for freezing and thawing unfertilized eggs.

In 1975, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, which later became HHS, issued regulations requiring an ethics advisory board to address the ethics of infertility research. In addition, the department ruled that such research could not be funded without the advisory board’s recommendation.

The board was disbanded in 1980, however, and has not been reinstated, despite promises by HHS to do so, the report said.

“This Catch-22 has been used as an excuse to refuse to provide any federal funds,” Weiss said. “As a result . . . the success rates have remained disappointingly low.”

Dr. Florence Haseltine, director of the Center for Population Research of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, estimated that about 100 in-vitro fertilization-related grant proposals would be submitted to the National Institutes of Health every year if such research were eligible for funding.

“When research is contemplated, everyone looks to NIH,” she said in an interview. “Yet, they can’t look to NIH because, without the board, we’re not able to support research. The irony is obvious.”

Haseltine said that “as a person who once practiced reproductive medicine,” she could not understand opposition to research that would enable more people to bear children.

“We’re trying to promote life, not destroy it,” she said.

The report recommended that research on in-vitro fertilization be exempt from review by the ethics advisory board and instead come under the jurisdiction of the NIH director. It also recommended that the federal government increase funding for disease prevention into conditions that cause infertility.

The report also charged the Department of Veterans Affairs with refusing to provide infertility services to veterans, even when the condition was the result of service-connected spinal injuries or other trauma.

Weiss said the department has ignored recommendations from its own advisory board to provide infertility services.

Bonner Day, a veterans department spokesman, said department officials had not seen the report.