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American scientists have no trouble dreaming up these and other possibilities, but, for the moment, dreaming is all they can do. Because of the political sensitivity of experiments with human embryos, federal grant money, which fuels 85% of bio-medical research in the U.S., has been denied to scientists in this field. So controversial is the issue that four successive Secretaries of Health and Human Services (formerly Health, Education and Welfare) have refused to deal with it. This summer, Norfolk's Hodgen resigned as chief of pregnancy research at the National Institutes of Health. He explained his frustration at a congressional hearing: "No mentor of young physicians and scientists beginning their academic careers in reproductive medicine can deny the central importance of IVF-embryo transfer research." In Hodgen's view the curb on research funds is also a breach of government responsibility toward "generations of unborn" and toward infertile couples who still desperately want help.
In an obstetrics waiting room at Norfolk's in-vitro clinic, a woman sits crying. Thirty-year-old Michel Jones and her husband Richard, 33, a welder at the Norfolk Navy yard, have been through the program four times, without success. Now their insurance company is refusing to pay for another attempt, and says Richard indignantly, "they even want their money back for the first three times." On a bulletin board in the room is a sign giving the schedule for blood tests, ultrasound and other medical exams. Beside it hangs a small picture of a soaring bird and the message: "You never fail until you stop trying." Michel Jones is not about to quit. Says she: "You have a dream to come here and get pregnant. It is the chance of a lifetime. I won't give Up."
—By Claudia Wallis. Reported by Mary Cronin/London, Patricia Delaney/Washington and Ruth Mehrtens Galvin/Norfolk