DONUM VITAE
Catholic Ping - let me know if you want on/off this list
Posted on 08/30/2004 6:48:52 AM PDT by NYer
CAMDEN, New Jersey, August 27, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Fertility specialists create more embryos than are needed when performing in-vitro fertilization. The question arises: what is done with all the "extra" embryonic children? Researchers at Rutgers and Pennsylvania State Universities conducted a survey of fertility clinics to answer the dilemma.
The scientists found that besides simple disposal, clinics will also offer other options, such as adoption. Some clinics even allow the parents to take their embryonic children home, or allow them to attend a "funeral" for the children.
"There is certainly a lot more ambivalence about what embryos are than I had ever imagined before starting this study," study co-author Arthur Caplan said, as reported by Wired News. "The fact that these practices are so varied shows a lot more division even in groups that work with embryos than we might have guessed."
In a survey of 217 IVF clinics in the U.S., Caplan and co-author Andrea Gurmankin learned that 97 percent of clinics create extra embryos and cryopreserve them.
Caplan and Gurmankin found that most clinics were willing to donate the embryonic children as a source of stem cells for research. This, despite evidence that most also believed the embryo was more than just a "collection of cells."
The team also learned that 81 percent dispose of extra embryos -- most only after receiving permission from both parents. Disposal was typically by incineration.
Four clinics said they give the "extra" embryonic children back to the parents to take home, however, how they were sent home was not answered by the survey. "They're the size of a period at the end of a sentence," said Caplan. "Do they put them in baggies, a matchbox?"
Twenty-eight clinics said they offered the opportunity for parents to be present for the disposals, while 14 percent forbade it. Most said they would allow parents to be present, although they did not explicitly offer the option. Four percent of clinics that disposed of the children said they held funerals, including prayers.
Catholic Ping - let me know if you want on/off this list
Wow! Every time I read something about this, I think I am more stunned than I was before. I can hardly believe that we do this in our society, yet we do, apparently quite regularly. Many times I wonder whether God will continue to bless this great nation if we don't turn back from these destructive ways. I am having a harder and harder time thinking of us as a life-affirming country any more.
Caplan could have made four phone calls, to find out the answer.
Maybe he didn't want to know the answer to his own question.
What is additionally disturbing is that there is a HUGE demand for fertalized embryos by childless couples that would "adopt" these kids.
(For those who don't know, the expensive/uncertain part of IVF is the drugs to produce and the procedure to retrieve the unfertalized eggs. The transfer of an embryo is a 15-minute, no anestesa, procedure.)
Also, unecessary fertalization could be avoided if the clinic has the ability to freeze eggs (note: "eggs," not embyos, which are fertilzed.)
A few clinics are now providing egg freezing on an experimental basis. However, it is extremely unreliable, and therefore would be a very expensive alternative to freezing spare embryos -- putting it beyond the reach of most prospective parents. In most case, the woman would end up needing to undergo additional egg production/retrieval cycles, to make up for all the eggs lost during freezing. The primary market for egg freezing, even after it's perfected, will be women who want to postpone childbearing AND have not yet settled on a partner.
There is not a "huge demand" for adoption of frozen embryos, compared to the number of excess embryos frozen and available for adoption. Nearly all couples prefer to have children which are genetically related to at least one parent, and it is extremely rare for both male and female partners to have unremediable infertility. Most couples who go this route are doing so only because they can't afford the additional cost of producing embryos which are related to at least one of them. Have you ever heard of someone who wanted to adopt embyros and found they were unavailable? I haven't, and I've read pretty widely in this field.
That is bizarre.
Yes, I have heard of many someones who wanted to adopt embryos and found them unavailable --- starting with my wife and myself.
Our concern was with only one parter, but we did not want either just egg or sperm donation because it smelled of using a handmaid/adultery, ala Abraham.
Further, with a completely donated embryo there would not be any real or perceived "unfairness" to one or the other parter.
Hence, our resolution was "all or none."
As God would have it, it was "all" and we are having a full genetic child (ironically because IVF was cheaper than adoption --- $25,000).
We were blessed not only to have a child, but also able to avoid the hard choices regarding so-called "extra" embryos --- here, we resolved ahead of time to have multiples or place them for adoption.
Fortunately, our doctor was on the cutting edge with regard to stimulation dosages, so we did not have the multiple eggs people so often have to deal with.
Congratulations on your success!
Perhaps your particular clinic had no embryos available for adoption, but if you had needed/wanted to pursue that route, you could easily have found them available at many other clinics.
While adopting a healthy white infant is generally more expensive than IVF (unless you end up having to do several rounds of IVF), adopting a frozen embryo is generally a lot less expensive than adopting an infant and somewhat less expensive than IVF.
Your doctor was probably more lucky than "on the cutting edge" re stimulation drug dosages. There is huge individual variation in response, and no reliable way to predict an individual woman's response. Also, for couples who have a male factor problem, or for older women in whom a high percentage of eggs are expecgted to be genetically or otherwise defective, the objective is to get the woman to produce as many eggs as possible, since many will not fertilize or will not develop after fertilization. Also, for couples with limited financial means and/or limited insurance coverage, the objective is to create as many embyros as possible, in case the first (or even second) transfer fails, since they may not be able to afford a second or third stimulation/retrieval cycle. A lot of the extra embryos in storage are the result of the impossibility of accurately predicting egg production response AND subsequent fertilization/development/implantation -- not the result of doctors who are ignorant about the optimal dosages of stimulation drugs.
""They're the size of a period at the end of a sentence," said Caplan."
How big is a human egg? I thought they were small, but large enough to be visible to the naked eye? The size of a pea? An embryo wouldn't be smaller would it?
Now that's Compassionate Conservatism in action.
In God's world there are:
Infertile couples who want children
and
Children whose parents don't want them.
Adoption seems to be the obvious answer - not spending $25,000 on IVF.
Why did you reject all those born children who need parents so badly?
Did you ever think that God would have it
that pro-creation was so sacred
that it was to be done privately
by the two parents in their marriage bed
and not
something to be done in a lab?
Me personally if I could not conceive naturally, I would adopt children. If someone wants to have IVF, that's fine for them but what about all the children who don't have parents???
Sorry, you misread my post. It costs $25,000 to adopt, bare minimum. It cost $500 (our insurance deductible) to have IVF. Indeed, we had started a non-domestic adoption process, with home-study ecetera, and already spent $6,500, which we will never see again.
I did not "reject all those born children who need parents so badly," any more than you have by not adopting them yourself.
Indeed, I encourage you to adopt "unwanted" embyos and give birth to as many children as you can.
Domestic adoption is also now full of liberal garbage that makes it very difficult to have a normal, stable, family --- we could not find a domestic group locally (even nominally Christian groups) that did not demand "open" adoptions --- that is, the birth mother stays involved. (Hence, foreign adoption.)
I know this to be a real problem. My sister (who already had three children) went through open adoption. Her newest child is wonderful. BUT my sister had to move out of state, no forwarding address, no mortgage and staying off credit rolls, because the crack whore birth mother kept showing up, demanding to see "her" child, and then demanding money.
I heard much the same argument about antibiotics. I guess people who get sick shouldn't take them, because it's God's will that they die.
Regardless, to give you some background on your point, the collection from the husband is typically done with the assistance of his wife, in private, not in a lab.
And the actual fertilization of the egg, if everything is working normally, occurs many hours after the actual sex act, often days later. So the woman very well could be walking along in the supermarket at the actual moment of conception. Implantation --- where the embryo (at that time just 8 to 32 cells) happens days later.
Indeed, I am often amazed at how little people understand IVF, perhaps because I was raised on a ranch, and we did it all the time with cows.
The sperm and egg are joined naturally. As in nature, sometimes God does not breathe life into them and they do not divide (doctors say DNA problems; I say different). In nature, the embryo would move down to implant in the uterous a 3 days later, unless it misses the target, which happens more than one would think, especially when the woman is scarred by endometriosis.
In IVF, they hold the embryo in a liquid just the same as inside the woman, and transfer the baby directly to the target, now better avoiding the scarring.
Indeed, in our instance, the problem was not fetilization, but implantation of the baby because of endometriosis --- in short, we would conceive and miscarry at 3 days.
With IVF, the doctor was able to put the baby in the right place to grow and prosper.
1. In IVF, the child is conceived through masturbation and methods copied from animal husbandry, as you point out.
2. You chose this method for the conception of your child.
Do you want people to think this a good thing?
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