Couples Cull Embryos to Halt Heritage of Cancer

NY Times ^ | 09.03.06 | AMY HARMON

[Coleus]

As Chad Kingsbury watches his daughter playing in the sandbox behind their suburban Chicago house, the thought that has flashed through his mind a million times in her two years of life comes again: Chloe will never be sick.

Not, at least, with the inherited form of colon cancer that has devastated his family, killing his mother, her father and her two brothers, and that he too may face because of a genetic mutation that makes him unusually susceptible.

By subjecting Chloe to a genetic test when she was an eight-cell embryo in a petri dish, Mr. Kingsbury and his wife, Colby, were able to determine that she did not harbor the defective gene. That was the reason they selected her, from among the other embryos they had conceived through elective in vitro fertilization, to implant in her mother’s uterus.

Prospective parents have been using the procedure, known as preimplantation genetic diagnosis, or P.G.D., for more than a decade to screen for genes certain to cause childhood diseases that are severe and largely untreatable.

Now a growing number of couples like the Kingsburys are crossing a new threshold for parental intervention in the genetic makeup of their offspring: They are using P.G.D. to detect a predisposition to cancers that may or may not develop later in life, and are often treatable if they do.

For most parents who have used preimplantation diagnosis, the burden of playing God has been trumped by the near certainty that diseases like cystic fibrosis and sickle cell anemia will afflict the children who carry the genetic mutation that causes them.

[Petronski]

That's precisely the problem: They *won't* be human.

You're unintentionally correct. They were human, but they won't be anymore.

After they've been murdered.

[syriacus]

I can think of no worse authority on science than the Catholic Church.

Do you accept the Catholic Church's authority on infanticide?

Immediately after the Emperor Constantine's conversion he enacted two laws (about A. D. 320) directed against child-murder

[Petronski]

I really don't understand why environment is an intrinsic quality of humanness and should be used as a test for humanity.

I understand it. It should be used that way because it is convenient for them--not for their victims, but definitely for them.

[orionblamblam]

> the nihilistic, hedonistic lifestyle you are advocating

Since I've advocated no such thing, it's pretty clear that you have nothing of honest value to contribute.

> go suck on your bong some more.

That confirms it.

[syriacus]

One way to be rid of a genetic disorder is for no more individuals with the disorder to be born. Harsh? Yes... but then, so is quarantining shooting down a jetliner with an outbreak of ebola.

I made your comparison more appropriate.

Equivalent harsheness, so to speak.

[syriacus]

And then we can get rid of chemotherapy and glasses, too.

I missed the post where someone suggested doing that. Why did they think we should get rid of them?

That would be cruel.

[syriacus]

Wow. That's an inflammatory question. I would consider any such procedure to be immoral medical experimentation on humans.

My question wasn't answered.

[metmom]

They *won't* be human. They are not being *made* to be human.

Yes, they will and yes, they are. What does the DNA tell you? Human sperm and human eggs were used to create human beings; there's nothing else they could have or would have become if allowed to grow. They weren't allowed to grow but that is not the criteria for determining humanity.

[Wonder Warthog]

"Errrr.... no. That's precisely the problem: They *won't* be human. They are not being *made* to be human. They are being made to be weeded through."

Errr....yes. It doesn't matter why they are "made". If the biochemistry is started, they WILL become human, given the right conditions.

"Once again: point to a fully functional human being (I'd settled for a ten-pound baby) brought up in a test tube... not implanted in a womb."

They don't exist. That's no excuse for justifying murder, though, which is what you're all about.

[Wonder Warthog]

"By that logic, no new medicines, surgical techniques or genetic technologies will be developed, as they all involve the substantial risk of death."

Uh, there's a difference between a VOLUNTARY risk of death for oneself, and death imposed by an outsider. The only legitimate instance of the latter is the death penalty imposed by court order.

"What you support isn't *ethics.* It's *arbitrary* *decisions.*"

There's nothing "arbitrary" about it. My position is based on two points---science (in this case biochemistry), and the premise that human life is valuable and should be protected.

It's YOUR position that is both arbitrary and specious.

[syriacus]

Hogwash.

Do you want a side of fries with that order?

[Wonder Warthog]

"I can think of no worse authority on science than the Catholic Church."

Which shows you know nothing about either the history of science or the Catholic Church. The whole "Western" perspective of science is a direct result of the Catholic Church's promotion of an "ordered" universe understandable by human reason.

[metmom]

Yes, you are. Hello? Test tube? Not capable of supporting the development of an embryo.

Capable of supporting human life long enough for it to start to grow, so someone can decide which ones are *worth* keeping based on some arbitrary standard and the rest are killed (forced stopped growth).

The limiting factor here , right now, is technology. If technology were advanced enough to allow growth through the full normal 9 month gestational period, you'd have a human newborn baby, most likely indistinguishable from one conceived and nurtured natually. No difference in humanness due to it's environment.

[metmom]

I really don't understand why environment is an intrinsic quality of humanness and should be used as a test for humanity.

You don't understand it because it's one of the most illogical and stupid arguments for determining humanity I've ever seen anyone put forth. The astronauts on the moon weren't any less human because they visited there and if by some chance someone were exposed to that environment there with no protection, they would not cease to be human, they would cease to be alive. They would be a dead human as opposed to a live human, but human nevertheless.

[syriacus]

How is that deliberately ending a life?

A life would be ended through neglect. I guess you could label it a wrongful death.

[tortoise]

All I'm projecting to you is that go out the way you lived.

Then I should do just fine.

[jas3]

"One could make a dozen similar arguments that the specialization of the first neural cell or the first cardiac cell is a singular event. It happens once. The division from one to two cells is a singular event; it happens once."

More sophistry. None of these events would happen without the INITIATING event---the triggering of the growth of an individual human by the union of egg and sperm.

Yes, but the triggering of the growth by the union of egg and sperm results in a live birth less than half the time, even excluding intentional abortion by the mother. It is more likely than not that a fertilized egg will not implant, or if implanted will not be carried to term.

So given that a fertilzed egg is still only the a probability (and less than a 50% probability) of life, why chose the actual fertilization as the singular event which *IS* life and not something before or after it?

From my seat, the initiating event is the act of sex, not the fertilization of the egg. So should I be morally opposed to the use of spermicides, if I deem the initiating event to be prior to fertilization? I can't see any logical reason for moral consequence being established at the moment of "initiation" more than for a dozen other possibilities.

"So no fertilization = no moral consqeuence in your book? I'm sure can't be the whole picture. At what point does an unfertilized but still dividing egg deserve protection and why?"

And yet MORE sophistry. The "whole picture" is whether or not human life is to be valued and protected, no matter WHAT the phenomenon is that initates the process that will lead to that specific unique human---be that process the union of egg and sperm (which is the only process we have available today) or the injection of a cocktail of chemicals into an egg cell.

It is not sophistry at all. Some posters on this thread have imbued fertilization with magical properties that create a moral threshold before which there is no moral consequence to the destruction of an egg or of a sperm, but after which there is moral consquence to destruction of the combined sperm and egg. I am pointing out that eggs no longer need to be fertilized to create humans. And in fact you've tipped your hand by stating that the real issue is not fertilization, but when human life should or should not be protected. I think everyone on this thread agrees that human life should be protected, but there are various definitions of what counts as human life. Catholics might want to protect sperm, others might want to protect a fertilzed egg, others might want to protect a developed fetus, and others might want to protect a baby only after it has been born. I'm told that Peter Singer thinks a baby deserves protection only well after it is born.

I'm on the side that says "human life has value and should be protected". You're on the side that says murder is OK if the result helps someone else.

I think that murder is defensible in some cases. For example in self-defense, I would argue that murder is morally justified. Quakers would disagree with me. I also think that capital punishment is morally justified in certain cases. However, I don't think that murder is OK "if the result helps someone else." By that test one could murder another for essentially any reason.

The question here is whether or not the destruction of seven cells is equivalent to infanticide or to murder. I think rational people can disagree on that point. And I have not yet formed an opinion on the matter, despite your vitriolic assertions to the contrary.

jas3

[jas3]

But others feel that children should be given every possible chance and view that selecting an embryo without a terminal genetic defect is morally equivalent to giving a sick child a life saving medicine.

Not quite, because they're not giving those other embryos, their own kids, a chance at life because they can't be assured that their lives may not be the best they can have. Who can ever be assured of that?

Nobody can ever be assured that their children's lives may not be the best they can be. However one can be reasonably certain that a child's life will be better without a terminal genetic disease than with that same disease.

And the issue is that the parents do not view a ball of 7 cells as "their own kids". I think that is a reasonable view. I can understand why one might think that a child is morally different from a ball of 7 undifferentiated cells. And I can see why some people might think those 7 cells are not morally different than discarding unused sperm.

jas3

[tortoise]

Some posters on this thread have imbued fertilization with magical properties that create a moral threshold before which there is no moral consequence to the destruction of an egg or of a sperm, but after which there is moral consquence to destruction of the combined sperm and egg.

The root of the problem is that humanity is a continuum in fact, and any arbitrary binary quantization for the purposes of determining that humanity will be defective as a result yet people are wont to do it. As long as they make this incorrect assumption, all the reasoning that follows will be invalid. It really is that simple, but ignoring that fact makes things so much more tidy if you do not want to think too hard about a complex question.

Interestingly, the English Common Law has always recognized humanity as a gradient and would absolutely reject the idea that there is a clear line between when an object is a human being and when it is not.

[jas3]

"We're talking about a dozen cells. We're arguing over whether they are, in fact, legally-protected "human beings.""

Not currently protected, but they should be so protected, because they WILL be human. That's the whole point. Once the process is initiated, the biochemical result is inevitable--a fully functional human being. The "just a dozen cells" argument is bullshit (according to science).

That is most certainly NOT correct, Warthog. Very few implanted IVF embryos ever result in a baby. I think the current number is less than 10%, which is why doctors tend to implant so many of them in the hopes that just one will result in a live birth. Once the fertilization process is initiated, there is still only the potential (not the inevitable) that the blastosphere will become a human, even if the parents do everything possible to try to bring that blastosphere to full term.

I wonder if this is where the misunderstanding arises. Does knowing that very few IVFs work and that in nature, less than half of fertilized eggs result in a live birth change your view that a blastosphere must inevitably become a human?

jas3

p.s. There is no need to use profanities.