The move by Britain's Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority, which last week proposed that those undergoing IVF at Newcastle Fertility Center at Life be permitted to recoup half the procedure's cost if they "donate" half the eggs for research purposes, raises questions beyond those up for debate in Washington.

Prime Minister Blair and his government are generally permissive, if not outright supportive, of stem-cell research and therapeutic cloning, which scientists anticipate may lead to better treatment for cancer, spinal cord injuries and muscle damage. But providing a financial incentive to couples willing to participate, though indirectly, in such research raises some sticky issues.

PostGlobal called a member of the steering committee for the Hinxton Group, a self-described "international consortium on stem cells, ethics and law," to parse the matter.

Dr. Robin Lovell-Badge, who also heads the developmental genetics division at MRC National Institute for Medical Research in London, first made clear to us that the proposal does not imply an even cash-for-egg or cash-for-embryo exchange. And he noted that the practice of "egg-sharing," wherein a couple undergoing traditional IVF passes along a percentage of unfertilized eggs to a woman who produces none herself (and the two couples divide the harvesting costs), already exists in Britain. Through egg-sharing, a couple with an infertile female partner can conceive a child whose father is a biological parent. The difference here is that couples would egg-share with research institutions, rather than other couples.

(NB: Egg-sharing is different to "embryo adoption," in which an already-fertilized embryo left over from another couple's IVF treatment is implanted in an infertile woman's uterus. When Bush announced his veto, he surrounded himself with families whose children were adopted as embryos).

In the U.S., where college bathroom stalls are plastered with flyers tempting co-eds to sell their eggs for as much as $50,000; Britain does not allow such trade in human tissue. Reasonable travel expenses and the like may be covered by an infertile couple, but that's where it ends.

Lovell-Badge says that's due to the dangers faced by a potential egg donor: "It is not a neutral procedure; it has its own risks associated with it." Likewise, you cannot buy someone's a kidney even if he or she has a second healthy one. Egg-sharing is less problematic than recruiting compensated "donors" from a medical standpoint because additional women aren't opened up to risk.

The Times of London says, "It is illegal to pay egg donors directly for any purpose," and goes on to quote an obstetrics and gynecology professor at the British capital's Kings College, Peter Baude, as saying, "This is inconsistent with the stance of not paying for eggs for research."

The leader of the Newcastle research team, Alison Murdoch, contends, "We are helping [couples] to have treatment they may not otherwise be able to afford."

Indeed, the savings could be substantial. Lovell-Badge told us that a first round of this type of fertility treatment is covered by insurance, and possibly the second, but after that couples are on their own, which can add up to tens of thousands of dollars paid out-of-pocket.

Dr. Lovell-Badge has another concern: Under the proposal, funds earmarked for research would end up going toward treatment of patients. Is that an appropriate use of such money, he asks?

Yet scientists need high-quality eggs to do their work. They have until this point been using eggs that did not fertilize in IVF, which means they're probably defective in some way, although Dr. Murdoch's group managed to produce a paper last year using that type of biological material.

Policy on stem-cell research varies widely around the world. Julia Finkel, of and the Phoebe R. Berman Bioethics Institute at Johns Hopkins University and the Hinxton Group, provided PostGlobal with maps of the world illustrating the differences between countries.

Click on the map of Europe above to see how governments treat the issue there, as well as in the Americas, Asia and Africa and the Middle East. She invited readers to send her questions at jfinkel@jhsph.edu.

Policy does not necessarily reflect public opinion. According to a Gallup poll, 6 in 10 Americans disapproved of the Bush veto and the GOP wasn't united in its voting on the Hill either. California's Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, recently met with Bush's chum Blair, in part to discuss collaborating on stem-cell projects.

"They are interested in working with us in developing the stem cell industry and we're working toward a joint UK-California conference to be held in the U.K. in November," Reuters quotes a spokesman for Blair as saying.

Naturally, deep skepticism exists in Britain regarding the stem-cell debate, despite Blair's apparent enthusiasm. The Telegraph newspaper quoted Josephine Quintavalle, of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, as calling the scheme "lunacy," saying, "It makes a nonsense of the HFEA's consultation process, when this is probably one of the most controversial things they have ever done."

"Public views change," Lovell-Badge says. In this case, they change rapidly and dramatically -- which partly explains why the doctor thinks egg-sharing for research is a year off at least. This is not a pure U.K. v. U.S. debate, and we're comparing policy trends that aren't quite apples to apples. Let us know what you think about stem-cell policy in your country, or elsewhere.