Posted on 09/03/2006 1:55:46 PM PDT by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
You're kidding right? Maybe you need to go back over the pro-life part.
You are the one hung up on the soul thing. I have told you that whether there's a soul or not is immaterial to my thoughts on the matter. What's your problem with that? Can you not accept the possibility that the arguments you disagree with are not based on your preferred straw-man?
I know you're just looking to be told that whatever it is you've chosen is ok. Check out my first post on the thread where I said you can choose to live with principles or rationalizations. I guess you've chosen the latter.
Against it, unless keeping an individual alive would create more death, the position of the Catholic Church.
An innocent soul doesn't require baptism in order to go to Heaven. God knows what's going to happen in the development of embryos and allots and takes home souls accordingly.
It will be a joyful time for the parents of incomplete pregnancies to finally get to be with the children they never even had a chance to hold.
I am not responsible for them, thier parents are. I do have a responsibility for helping destroy the system that created them, and incidentally, gave the parents choice to kill their own children.
PLus where would I implant them, in my male reproductive glands?
I would not have a problem with that. That's the first thing you've said tonight that I agree with, girl.
I hear that... I love the better than statements too.
Maybe it would be better knowing you have this trait not to have children? Maybe they should have discussed that in depth way before? Nevermind... I guess that's too cruel for the adults.
Satire rant note:
Like my terrible two toddler that's getting on my nerves? I could call it a ten trimester post abortion. Or my teenagers... oh boy... outta here. Or my grandma, who left me something in the will... is ill and I just can't take care of her anymore? Plus the meds and other bills... Gone.
What the hey, since they're screening... maybe they can take the spare parts... it's all relative. "It's for the good of the people... it could be worse you know.
It's like the new "ethical" "embryonic" stem cells. Remove one cell at the eight cell stage (nevermind how many more times it had to multiply... we're stupid you know), and state it could go on to grow normal... yep, that cell that would have divided a few more times was there for no reason... yep, I believe that... ethical... embryonic. Nothing lacking.
The search for perfection... screen out all abnormalties... that really worked out well for Hitler... and Margaret Sanger is the mother of many diseases, broken marriages, adultery and no responsibility for the bad 'private choices' (that could be thought about ahead... but that would be too easy), paid for by the taxpayer in most cases. See the rates of suicide, drug use and general non-existant self-esteem for young girls and women, and the get out of jail free/no responsibility card for the men. Don't get me started on the underage rapes... after all, you don't have to take them to the abortion clinic now, you can go purchase Plan B for the underage tot and no one's the wiser. Yep... see the elderly and disabled taken out (their lives are not productive, they're faulty). Brave? New World.
They are fertilized ova, the beginning of human life.
Prenatal diagnosis, which presents no moral objections if carried out in order to identify the medical treatment which may be needed by the child in the womb, all too often becomes an opportunity for proposing and procuring an abortion. This is eugenic abortion, justified in public opinion on the basis of a mentality--mistakenly held to be consistent with the demands of "therapeutic interventions"--which accepts life only under certain conditions and rejects it when it is affected by any limitation, handicap or illness.
Following this same logic, the point has been reached where the most basic care, even nourishment, is denied to babies born with serious handicaps or illnesses. The contemporary scene, moreover, is becoming even more alarming by reason of the proposals, advanced here and there, to justify even infanticide, following the same arguments used to justify the right to abortion. In this way, we revert to a state of barbarism which one hoped had been left behind forever.
Evangelium Vitae
It's called natural law.
Where did they come from?
> PLus where would I implant them, in my male reproductive glands?
Males are theoretically capable of carrying embryos. Somewhere in the gut, IIRC. However, there have been no trials. And I note that those screaming the loudest that allowing seven cells to die is murder *aren't* clamoring for proper medical trials of using males to carry fetuses. now, why is that?
Not relevant. An embryo on a perti dish is viable *only* if medical technology works at it further and makes it so.
From what I have learned about human development, fertilization is the most logical point to say "an individual human life has started." I do not draw a distinctino based on whether this occurs in vitro or in vivo, with a penis or with a turkey baster. From then on, it's a steady progression through normal development, if in the proper environment. I think it is silly to say that one embryo is less human if it is in a dish rather than a womb. I think that's as silly as saying a two-month old left outside on a cold winter night is less human than one tucked into a crib because one lived and one died. To me, those are arbitrary, irrational demarcations. I think environment, size, whether she's "wanted", and many other criteria are arbitrary and irrational to use to define a human being. I find people weak and emotion-driven when they use genes to select which kid to have.
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