A Texas fertility clinic now promoting its plan to "design" babies for customers is moving society another step down the road toward full-blown eugenics in the United States, where there would be certain categories of lives that simply would be valueless, according to a spokesman for an organization of physicians.
"I hope we have the gumption to have laws passed that will prohibit this," Dr. Gene Rudd, the associate executive director for the Christian Medical Association, told WND. "But one we've gone so far, how can you justify not going just a little bit further … down that ethical abyss."
He was directing his comments to an announcement by a Texas fertility clinic that it would match sperm and egg donors to meet criteria for babies demanded by customers – an entirely new concept in "Have it your way," Rudd said.
The association's statement on the issue said the clinic's ethics were seriously lacking because it was "grading babies like meat in a supermarket."
The proposal has been made by the Abraham Center of Life in Texas, an in-vitro fertilization clinic that said the donors would be screened and confirmed so that the features parents desire are present in a baby.
"This designer baby scheme crosses ethical and moral boundaries by turning babies into commodities," said Dr. David Stevens, CEO of the 17,000-member CMA. "By stressing the educational level of sperm and egg donors, this center is preying on parents who have fallen victim to the false notion that babies are a status symbol, and that intelligence, race or appearance are somehow measures of worth."
Rudd said the concept of "improving" a population by "controlled breeding" has been exhibited before in history, and Americans perhaps should review the outcomes there before moving forward with the plan again.
Rudd noted that a famous doctor who attended the Nuremberg trials after World War II noted that "all the atrocities in Germany had their roots in a change of attitude within the medical community – that there were lives not worthy to be lived."
Once that happens, it's not just screening for a disease or malformation, but for blue eyes and blond hair. "We're marginalizing human life simply because we want a particular trait," Rudd told WND.
The specific plan offered by the clinic advertises that the women donors all will have post-high school degrees, and the men who donate must have advanced degrees. But the nature of such medical procedures also requires that multiple eggs be fertilized – to make sure one has the "right" features – and the rest then are destroyed.
The steps will have to include a test, he noted. "Then if they don't come up with things that the customer is looking for they'll say, 'oh well, we'll try again.'"
It's enough heartbreak to have unintended pregnancies cut short, he said, but even worse to know that you're creating living beings whose lives will be cut short when they no longer are needed.
The next step won't be far away, either, Rudd added. If choices are available for children's eyes and hair color etc., then if someone ends up with a child who isn't "perfect," they will just "keep shopping," he said.
"Humanity used to be measured by how we cared for those less able," Rudd told WND. "Now we're getting rid of all those."
And the cleansing process will be at just an opening stage, Rudd noted. "First they eliminated the criminally insane, then the insane, then the infirm, elderly, young and disabled," Rudd said his studies of Nazi Germany have taught him. "Eventually such 'cleansing' was extended to all who were not German."
The clinic alleges the selection process is set up so that the babies match the hopeful parents' desires. "We're just trying to help people have babies," Jeanalee Ryan of The Abraham Center of Life, told the Washington Post.
The costs have been estimated at about $10,000 for the process.
"The creation of 'designer embryos' for sale to unrelated individuals is the commmodification of human life for financial purposes by unscrupulous scientists and physicians," said CMA member Dr. Jeffrey Keenan, IVF specialist and medical director for the National Embryo Donation Center.
"This activity is deemed unethical by all organizations who have addressed it, and is illegal in many developed countries. Human life is sacred and should never be bought or sold at any stage of development,” Ryan said.
 Did Hitler practice Darwinism? |
One of the biggest supporters of eugenics was Adolf Hitler, according to a program called "Darwin's Deadly Legacy", a Coral Ridge Ministries production featuring more than a dozen experts in various fields talking about the connections between Darwin's theories, eugenics, Hitler and abortion.
Its premise is that Darwin's thinking changed the world's perception of people, so instead of considering them made in God's image, they became just another organism. Bloggers Internet-wide as well as the Anti-Defamation League launched their criticism in pointed phrases when the airing was announced.
But Rabbi Daniel Lapin, founder of Toward Tradition, suggested reining in the words just a little.
"Some American Jews may believe that Christian conservatives pose the biggest threat to Judaism. Therefore Jews should insult and attack Christians and suppress dissent by constantly evoking the Holocaust while darkly implying anti-Semitism," he wrote in a column addressing the dispute. "God help Jews if America ever becomes a post-Christian society. Just think of Europe."
D. James Kennedy, the Coral Ridge founder, suggested, "No Darwin, no Hitler."
Producer Jerry Newcomb said the show included WND columnist Ann Coulter, who also wrote the bestselling "Godless: The Church of Liberalism."
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