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Sex-Selection by Embryo Screening Approved for US Trial
LifeSiteNews.com ^ | 28 October 2005

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.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Front Page News; News/Current Events; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: bioethics; embryo; frankenstein; ivf; life; science; sexselection; slipperyslope
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To: gamarob1

"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."

You have more faith in education - and humanity - than I do.


81 posted on 10/27/2005 9:00:27 PM PDT by MonaMars
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To: gamarob1

Oh please, your are so ignorant. This is my last response to you. SURGERY TO SAVE SOMEONE'S LIFE AND SURGERY TO END ANOTHER HUMAN LIFE - yes, an embryo is a human life, are two different objectives. You are trying to rationalize away responsibility and guilt. IVF is a sin because it goes against the will of God by natural means. SELF-will in preference to God's Will.


82 posted on 10/27/2005 9:01:51 PM PDT by Gerish (Choose God, he has already chosen you.)
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To: MonaMars

So the answer is telling everyone what they can and can't do, on everything? It's not necessarily a liberal view to desire that the government not have a hand in EVERYTHING that goes on in human life. Quite the contrary...


83 posted on 10/27/2005 9:02:03 PM PDT by gamarob1
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To: podkane

I recently read that China has had a 13/10 male/female ratio for some time now and the results are higher crime, higher incidents of violence, more rapes and more molestation, more homosexuality. The report, if I recall correctly, was in the South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), April, 2005.


84 posted on 10/27/2005 9:02:18 PM PDT by Free Baptist
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To: MHGinTN

I didn't say I knew.. neither of us can prove when life begins. I'm not invoking God's will. A life may begin at conception.

I just don't claim that I know what God wants.

If I'm sinning I'm man enough to own up to it.


85 posted on 10/27/2005 9:02:38 PM PDT by Almondjoy
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To: Gerish

Thank you that this is your last response to me. IVF doesn't end a human life. If done right, all embryos are used.


86 posted on 10/27/2005 9:02:44 PM PDT by gamarob1
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To: Gerish

And by natural of course you mean when we were born. However you seem to be concerned that God didn't account for technology.

If God saw technology as evil then we would have our apoclypse long ago.


87 posted on 10/27/2005 9:06:09 PM PDT by Almondjoy
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To: Almondjoy
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?

I believe that all unbaptized infants will eventually "go to heaven," that is, meet God "face to face."

I believe that because they never sinned, they never denied their God who loves them and so, He will call them home.

88 posted on 10/27/2005 9:08:29 PM PDT by MSSC6644
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To: podkane
Would that ever put the breaks on population growth

What population growth? The U.S. is already experiencing native population decline and the U.N. currently projects that the global population will be decreasing by about 2050. The "Population Explosion" was a lie put forth by racist eugenicists.

89 posted on 10/27/2005 9:10:36 PM PDT by Ronaldus Magnus
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To: Ronaldus Magnus
What population growth? The U.S. is already experiencing native population decline and the U.N. currently projects that the global population will be decreasing by about 2050. The "Population Explosion" was a lie put forth by racist eugenicists.

How funny. So many have put career and financial advancement above child rearing. China and India requre population controls. And to think so many were crying out, how can the world hold so many people? Interesting stats. The world can hold tons more than it has....

90 posted on 10/27/2005 9:14:12 PM PDT by gamarob1
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To: MSSC6644

Then why does God have a plan for miscarriage.

Can you tell me why these souls go straight to heaven without taking in one breath of oxygen? Without one heartbeat?

Are people who are born deaf suppose to remain deaf as acceptance of God's will?

If I'm sick of the flu should I remain home and stay in bed and have only chicken soup?

If I get cancer should I not have radiation therapy?

You need to think about these things.


91 posted on 10/27/2005 9:19:31 PM PDT by Almondjoy
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To: gamarob1

"So the answer is telling everyone what they can and can't do, on everything?"

I don't believe I suggested that in any way, shape, or form.


92 posted on 10/27/2005 9:25:19 PM PDT by MonaMars
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To: Almondjoy
You offered (quite cryptically), "... neither of us can prove when life begins." Actually, the very nature of IVF uses the FACT that at least one lifetime begins with conception as the fundamental tenent of the process. And yes I can prove when at least one lifetime begins, scientifically.

Now answer a question for me, please: does abortion kill a human being?

93 posted on 10/27/2005 9:26:07 PM PDT by MHGinTN (If you can read this, you've had life support from someone. Promote life support for others.)
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To: Almondjoy
You set up your own argument: Then why does God have a plan for miscarriage.

And then you question me on the argument and expect me to answer? I don't think so.

You should consider taking a course in logic, one in rhetoric and finally one in basic medical care. Bed rest and chicken soup are exactly the correct treatments for the flu.

94 posted on 10/27/2005 9:38:56 PM PDT by MSSC6644
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To: Yaelle
As long as they donate any unwanted embryos to the infertile couples waiting on long lists to adopt embryos.

If they donated them without any charge other than the storage incurred. And they would have to donate within 3 years.

I find storing embryos a little unsettling. I vehemently oppose destroying them or using them for research.

I also don't want to encourage 'designer families'.
95 posted on 10/27/2005 10:27:45 PM PDT by George W. Bush
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To: George W. Bush

Storage of embryos is completely safe. And as the previous poster said, there are many people waiting to use them.


96 posted on 10/27/2005 11:10:37 PM PDT by gamarob1
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To: gamarob1; MSSC6644

If a miscarriage is like a fatal car crash, IVF is like using live test subjects instead of crash test dummies.

There is a 50% thaw death rate, and a 70% implantation death rate.

When "all embryos are used," six or seven individual microscopic humans are hurled at the brick wall of these odds in the hopes that at least one will survive to birth.

GamaRobL, you are peddling utter falsehood to claim that IVF doesn't end a human life.


97 posted on 10/28/2005 6:59:37 AM PDT by mvpel (Michael Pelletier)
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To: Aussie Dasher

This ain't no upwardly mobile freeway...oh no this is the Road to Hell.


98 posted on 10/28/2005 7:01:09 AM PDT by dfwgator
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To: MHGinTN; Coleus

prolife ping


99 posted on 10/28/2005 7:02:17 AM PDT by Calpernia (Breederville.com)
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To: gamarob1
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.

If there's no problem, as you assert, then why are we pushing 100 responses on this thread? Obviously not everyone agrees with you.

Remember that New York Times Magazine article by Amy Richards? She wound up with triplets after a wildly successful IVF procedure, and decided to "selectively reduce" two of them so she wouldn't have to move to Staten Island and give up her trendy Manhattan lifestyle, or have her remaining child "suffer" the knowledge that he had two unknown siblings living happy lives with other families.

Is there a "problem" there, in your view? Is it a "blessing" that she hired someone to reach into her womb and kill two of her unborn children, and wound up with a healthy son?

When people talk about the "slippery slope," this is exactly what they're referring to. The idea that tiny humans are disposable, expendable, starts in the petri dish and extends right into the womb.

A Staten Island Response
National Review

100 posted on 10/28/2005 7:17:39 AM PDT by mvpel (Michael Pelletier)
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