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.
Would that ever put the breaks on population growth - there would be a 4/1 male/female ratio within a generation.
I guess a whole series of hurricanes didn't convey the message clearly.
Wow! I can only say there is much in this world that I do not recognize anymore.
It is a brave new world. :-(
You'll appreciate this. As a homeschooling mom, I share current events with our sons every day. One of them commented today, "Mom, it's like every day there is something that is worse and worse...like getting hit with another cannonball every morning." We've started praying about these types of stories.
God help us.
Frankenstein medicine...
Amen!
What are these people thinking? Do they not realize that God has the power over life and death? Whatever fits their convenient and happy lifestyles I guess.
Well y'all can think what you want about the article and the concepts therein, but this statement is outrageously ignorant and offensive to those MARRIED couples who have been blessed with children through IVF. Why the assumption that the children conceived aren't out of "the loving union of a man and a woman"?
As far as gender selection, the article did say that it's reserved for couples who already have a child of the other gender. So why all the chicken littles around here?
The technology, like ANY technology, can be used for great good. And like ANY technology, it can be abused. That doesn't mean to eradicate technology, like the Amish...
He does. And in His absolute authority, He has permitted that man can create life outside of the normal reproductive means, for those who are unable. Is that a problem for you?
Absolutely. Just because MAN has the technology or power to do something does not mean it is the right thing to do.
So you're blindly desiring to end IVF altogether, or are you referring to gender selection?
Even after having spent a gruelling 18 months and nearly $30,000 on an adoption, I still feel glad we did not go the IVF route.
There are hundreds of thousands of children in the world who desparately need families, and you don't have to create a batch of microscopic snowflake offspring to poke, prod, sort, and discard in order to choose whether you want a boy or a girl.
Both, and no I am not blind.
If you can't see that then you are self-righteously blind
I never said I don't value girl children. I said that the technology isn't necessarily evil in and of itself. It can be used for evil, but the technology itself isn't. For couples that want another gender from the one they already have, there isn't a problem. This isn't China
Yawn.......do they perceive their children as a gift from God or a gift from their doctor?
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