The growing practice of embryo eugenics
“Mommy, where did I come from?”
Throughout history, parents have squirmed at that question because it involved sex. Now, many are squirming because it doesn’t. For children born through in vitro fertilization—3 million and counting—the answer involves injections, selections, and lab dishes. The hard part is explaining the siblings we rejected: nearly half a million embryos frozen in U.S. clinics alone. For thousands of children, the story now includes preimplantation genetic diagnosis, a technique for weeding out flawed embryos.
What flaws are we screening for? That’s the most uncomfortable question of all. Sometimes the flaw is a horrible disease. But increasingly, it’s a milder disease, the absence of useful tissue, or just the wrong sex. If you think it’s hard to explain where babies come from, try explaining where baby-making is going.
:shudder: this is real? reminds me of the movie GATTACA where they did the exact same thing but “in the future.” if you haven’t seen it, i recemend the movie.
pandora box is open and all sorts of stuff is flying out of it… on john d’s old show silicon spin, the topic was cloning and a doctor was explaining how we have nothing to fear from the science that it is a natural process and then went on to state how he “created” the first test tube baby. one has to ask how far one should we go in “creating”… on one hand “god” doesn’t seem to play favorites.. he throws everything out there to makes it own way through the gene pool. on the other hand we know all too well what man is capable of … genie is out of the bottle and she ain’t going back in any time soon.
It’s only a problem if you make it a problem. Many, if not all women who concieve naturally are then checked for their fetus are ok or have genetic diseases. It’s only when fertilised eggs are chosen for sex, height, intelect etc, etc: non-life threatening or debilitating conditions that it becomes a serious ethical and moral issue. Where the natural choice is removed. There’s still natural choice in IVF: the person doing the work can’t tell the difference from looking at one egg than another what the end product will be.
To admit to you children that you couldn’t concieve them naturally is nothing to be ashamed of, but the actual fact that the child(ren) still ultimately came from both parents and were then carried by their mother for 9 months and subsequently accepted into the family and loved etc, etc is the most important point.
Better that than worrying if your crippled child will still have decent care once you die of old age.
Just tell the little nippers the one about the stork, they’ll believe it, and you will be preparing them for their lives as consumers, where they will be expected to believe nearly anything.
It would seem to me if the “little nippers” knew they came from “love” the question would go away. It’s children who are created in a dish by parents who fail them that are going to suffer, which is no different than children created the old fashion way being failed by their parents.
Another patient, described in the same article, set out to scan his embryos for colon cancer and ended up chucking two more for Down syndrome.
So, you can have a petri dish with a few/several of your embryos in it – and you have the choice of carrying one of them to term?
And, they can tell you which ones could/will have Down’s syndrome, and which ones shouldn’t/won’t…
The phrase “The March of Dimes… on Steroids” comes to mind. 🙂
If this ever became widely accepted, the Special Olympics would non-existent in a generation, or two.
You know, it always made me wince to hear people talk about the *slippery slope* when discussing some new thing or procedure or whatever. But this time, the slippery slope people were right, and it’s going to get a whole lot more slopped and slick before it’s all over.
How long do you suppose it is before some Doctor who thinks he’s God announces to the world that he been making designer babies?
Hitler was just 65 years to soon.