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.
Who are you to determine the will of God?
I doubt you'll answer this. You're too brainwashed...
"As far as gender selection, the article did say that it's reserved for couples who already have a child of the other gender."
Now it is. Give it time.
Amazing, liberal: "Surgery that saves someone's life ... Shouldn't they just have died, instead of using technology to survive, by your thinking?" You missed the cogent part about 'taking someone else's body parts for the surgery and discarding the source', or do you condone that also in your liberal world?
Typical slippery slope error. This isn't China. China has made the error of limiting one of the most basic human things, reproduction, and a mostly un-Christian and uninformed public act like animals in response. Educating people about these matters is the answer, not destruction of technology.
This is, as usual, the retelling of the story of eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. The tree exists, but God has told us not to eat the fruit. It's the first story. It's the foundation of the Judeo-Christian life. I feel terribly sorry for anyone who is so very blind to the horror and tragedy of IVF.
How does a parent who has a child via IVF tell that child that he or she is the lucky one; his brothers and sisters were frozen, given away or sold for science? One doesn't, of course. Why not?
What is done with the other embryos is a matter of education, not blind prohibition
So then you must believe that we have no free will. For God gives us all a choice.
Does God say it's evil to want a child?
If you enter marriage knowing that you can only have a child through artfical means(as in my previous example) does it make them evil to go ahead and marry and precede with that?
Remember abortion is ridding one's self of a responsiblity.
IVF is taking one on.
No where does the bible say life begins as a clump of cells. The fact remains that many Christians are oppose to abortion because it's sends the wrong message. It allows people to escape their responsiblities.
While IVF can be used for evil. God can also not to inject those "clump of cells" with a life of a soul because he wants his children to experience the joy's of parenthood.
Like I said.. don't be so quick to know God's will. You can only be so lucky.
I defend it because I know too many Christians who were blessed by it. It's not evil. It's mere technology. You've bought a bill of goods from someone, but don't understand what's really involved in the steps. Death isn't required in it. Inevidably it happens because most of the public ISN'T CHRISTIAN!!! Why can't you people see that? If you tell them what's right, they'll even do IVF the right way, and not throw embryos in the garbage. But that's the answer, not just destroying that which has blessed millions...
My my, you seem to love technology at all costs. Ever read about the vast technological ability of the Romans to pipe water to there homes via lead pipes? Oh, by your 'profile page' the Cal flag indicates you are very possibly a supporter of the stem cell harvesting from alive embryo-aged humans. Congratulations on your support of cannibalism, btw.
Now I'm evil for living in California!!! LOL. Run along, skippy, I think there's someone somewhere enjoying their life.
You offered, "Like I said.. don't be so quick to know God's will. You can only be so lucky." Ahem, and you are so close to the Almighty that you 'know' when the spirit is newly resident in the alive human? Would you like to let us in on the secret?
'skippy' ... bwahahahaha, good one! I like their peanut butter, don't you?
Do you believe that miscarried babies of 1 week or 2 months.. or whatever time frame are in heaven?
Do you believe they had a life deserving of heaven?
That good can arise from manifest evil is certainly beyond dispute over the long history of human evil in pursuit of good, both real and imagined.
The technology of IVF traffics in death. Death is an integral part of the technology. It's a matter of percentages, very unfavorable percentages from the viewpoint of the microscopic humans which are created and destroyed in its shotgun approach towards pregnancy.
The Talmud, a millenia old book of Jewish theological scholarship, has this to say on the subject:
"The governor of my town has ordered me to kill so-and-so, 'if not,' he says, 'I will kill you'."... and this ...[Raba] answered him, "Let him slay you rather than you commit murder. Who knows that your blood is redder? Perhaps his blood is redder."
Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin, 74a
He who destroys a life is as if he destroyed an entire world; and he who saves a life is as if he saved an entire world.
Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin, 37a
Playing the odds with IVF, you get to destroy many worlds while creating one.
I understand the intensity of the pull towards a biological child. I felt it deeply, and we grieved for the loss of the blood son or daughter my wife and I are unable to have. It's a process one has to go through to ready oneself to welcome someone else's unwanted child - who for whatever reason was NOT killed before birth - into your own family.
Someone who considers themselves to be a serious Christian or Jew, I think ought to consider the moral and ethical issues of IVF very carefully before proceeding.
How would you feel about IVF done one conceptus at a time instead of several in petri dishes?
That has to be one of the most ironic statements you've made in this entire thread. I have just one more comment, and then I'm off to bed.
THE END NEVER JUSTIFIES THE MEANS.
IVF has helped more people than you know, many who serve Jesus Christ. I know many IVF doctors who are Christians. If done right, there's no problem. Your crusade should focus on proper use of the technology, not robbing mankind of it.
God has blessed many with this technology. If done right, there's no problem. I'm sorry if that robs you of the opportunity to make a moral grandstand.
By the way movies have killed people too. But through tv, radio, and not to mention the internet God's people have been able to reach billions like never before. Able to spread his word.
I guess TV is evil too.
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