Posted on 03/09/2008 9:38:38 AM PDT by BGHater
· Law change could help cancer victims · embryo bill fuels impassioned debate
Mps are planning a change in the law to allow babies to be conceived from artificial sperm, a move described by opponents as playing God with human DNA.
A furious debate is building over how far to leave the door open to its use in IVF treatment, ahead of a Commons vote due shortly on the government's Human Fertilisation and Embryology bill. The legislation currently allows ...#8239;so-called artificial gametes in research, but imposes a blanket ban on their use in creating a human pregnancy.
The technique involves the creation in a lab of sperm grown from embryonic cells taken from the would-be parent. Although the science is in its infancy, it could ultimately help people rendered infertile by cancer treatment, or fortysomething women who can no longer produce their own eggs, to have children who are genetically related to them.
A cross-party group of MPs led by Liberal Democrat Evan Harris will table an amendment to relax the ban. 'There is no good explanation for not allowing this option for people who have survived cancer and cannot have children,' Harris told The Observer. 'This is a good bill, but the government needs to recognise a few improvements are still needed - such as allowing the use of artificial gametes - before we can say the UK has rational and progressive regulation.'
Dawn Primarolo, the Public Health Minister, confirmed last night that she was considering pleas from MPs and scientists to relax the ban. There was a 'powerful argument' that the new technique could help solve a shortage of sperm donors, she said, but she was sympathetic to arguments that a decision should not be rushed.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Hey folks, instead of funding Frankenbabies, why not spend a little more money on adoption??? I’m just sayin’...
Isn’t this a bit like counting your chickens before they hatch?? How many babies have been actually born and studied for birth defects, problems, etc. arising from this procedure?? I haven’t heard of a single child yet!
Sounds very much like the argument the embryonic stem cell research people use, that stem cells will heal ALL problems out there—yet there’s no documented research after all this time that it actually *does*, is there?
Hello?? Anyone? Bueller???
Isn’t there enough donated sperm out there?
Good grief!!!!
Everybody wants to be God. It’s a sick world.
Perhaps this isn’t playing God...just using the knowledge that God gave us.
Artificial sperm. Great. Are they doing this in livestock yet? That’s where it should stay, down at the farm.
Infertile? No problem, we will just clone a perfect blend of you and your husband! Don’t like his honkin nose? Don’t worry, we will blend that out. Think her brains are a little on the dense side? That can go too!
So what if there are millions of babies who needs homes. The important thing is that you get what you WANT.
(No! Bad Rich!)
(NO! BAD Rich!)
(What'd I say?)
To have biological, genetic progeny, is life’s most powerful instinct and desire. However harsh it may sound, anything else, is a substitute.
Coupled to that is the fact that--thanks to some boneheaded judicial decisions--one's own biological progeny are the only children to which one can really be assured no other individual will try to claim title (though the state may try to claim title regardless).
No, it’s not playing God. It’s failing to play human.
How could someone fail to play human?
Oh, there are many, many ways for somebody to fail to play human. By conceiving human children without making love, for one. By conceiving them without two parents, a father and a mother, for two. By conceiving them even without human sperm, for three.
By taking all the necessary steps toward making a child a commodity, an expensive hobby, a lifestyle accessory, a totally manufactured product, instead of a gift of human love. That's a key way you can fail to play human.
I guess we differ in some of our views. Thanks
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