Posted on 10/27/2005 7:20:09 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher
HOUSTON, October 27, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - An experiment has been underway for a month in a Houston Texas where parents are permitted to ask scientists for a child with the gender of their choice. The procedure involves preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) which is able to detect the sex of embryos created by in vitro fertilization (IVF) prior to their implantation in their mothers' wombs.
While sex selection via PGD has been allowed in some cases where sex-linked diseases are concerned, the clinical trial is seeking to gage the impact of sex selection at the whim of the parents. According to the journal Nature, the researchers, led by Sandra Carlson of Baylor College of Medicine, will be studying the long term health effect to the children born after PGD and also the social impact on the families.
The fundamental ethical problems behind PGD lie in its origin of IVF which creates children outside of the loving union of a man and a woman. Moreover, the lives of the embryonic children conceived by the IVF procedure are under severe threat since the latest statistics have revealed that over 85% of embryos transferred in the procedure die in the process.
However, with those arguments ignored, and IVF accepted as a moral procedure in most of the world, researchers are left looking at PGD as perhaps problematic since it may cause sex discrimination as is the case in China and India. Both countries have seen a discrepancy in the ratio of boys and girls born since one-child policies and discrimination against female children have resulted in abortion being used to eliminate female babies in utero.
PGD sex selection is banned in Canada, Britain and several other countries for that reason. However the researchers are suggesting sex selection may be ethical for 'family balancing'. The researchers have said they will only accept couples into the trial who have a child and want another child of the opposite sex.
PGD is already routinely used to screen out embryos with genetic defects. Thus those embryonic children with disabilities are disposed of (read killed) prior to being given a chance to be born, a fact which has been of serious concern to groups advocating for the disabled.
Correction - Amy Richards didn't have IVF, she went off the pill and evidently had unprotected intercourse during the fertility spike that occurs after doing so.
You mean the "message" that one should avoid areas subject to hurricanes?
No, the other more general message.
This is yet another hot button issue that will be a non-issue within one generation, thank God. This will be my last post on the issue. Feel free to continue your crusade as the moral police...
Still waiting to hear if you have an opinion on Judge Alito.
I've never said that the technology should be outlawed. Perhaps you're thinking of someone else responding to this thread?
You can't answer it because it defeats your arguement. If you don't have a discussion it doesn't bother me none.
No way to know.. while I believe that all life is precious and that I don't think it's right to have an abortion as a way of birth control.
I don't know for sure. I may be killing life.. in the sense that cells are alive.. but am I killing a soul. That no one can answer.
Now, let's look at the science and common sense.
How does a member of a species become a member?... Is it by default, conceived by members of the species therefore the conceived must be a member of same species? Or is there some magic thinking process which conveys species membership only upon those chosen by some means known to the older members of the species? Or is there some nebulous non-entity segment in gestation, a period during which the conceived could become any number of other species? Of course it is the first, by default, those conceived by two of the species are therefore members of the parents' species ... so far in the history of life on planet earth.
Is there some means by which value as a living member of the species can be conveyed?... In the natural sense, it is always upon birth into the air world, with all species. But are humans merely another species, or are humans somehow different? If we continue to dehumanize our preborn, we will prove ourselves merely another of the animal species on this planet. But I choose to believe we are different, if for no other reason than we have reached the state whereby we CAN be more than the natural world in which we eat and breath and seek shelter. Which is to be chosen as the path for future growth?... Mere animal status, or something more? The poster to whom I am responding would have the reader believe alive membership status in a species is arbitrary, something depending upon the choice of the other species member giving life support. What do you the reader believe? what is the higher level of 'choice'? Yes, CHOICE, for beliefs are chosen when it is all said and done. Do we choose to dehumanize our alive unborn or cherish them as fellow, innocent, to-be-protect members of our species? Almond Joy appears comfortable with the first (dehumanize the unborn and toss the 'moral' outcome aside for someone else to address), but how about the casual reader of this thread?
Pings to all, if you're so inclined tonight.
"Storage of embryos is completely safe." The fact that you would make such a misstatement shows you need to do a bit more study before spouting off ... unless the embryo age of the human lifetime is of no consequence in your calculus. In which case the entire IVF process is void of significance for a particular species or members of the species in the effort, becoming a magic process whereby a clump of cells magically transforms into a human clump of cells with significance based upon an arbitrary assignment of value.
I can see that you are a morally devoid wolf in sheeps clothing...
I am assuming Almond Joy never saw those newer ultra sound photos. Which may be why he calls fetuses a bunch of cells.
Don't assume such ... it never fails to astonish me just how well some can dismiss factual material that would shake their belief system. But the videos of alive humans in the womb moving around is a hard thing to dissemble away, just as the proven ability to learn at many weeks age before birth is a hard thing to dismiss as anomolous ... but many choose to do so!.
pingout tomorrow.
A character in one of my novels told me the following: do you know what you get when you assume?... full of donkey meat.
I have to upgrade my system environment. When I get that done, I have a video I want to record to an WMV file.
I look forward to people's reactions when I get it online.
Perhaps if you had read all of my posts you might have a clue as to what I was talking about.
Based on your answer I believe you missed the boat.
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