Science without Limits: Reinventing Parenthood

BreakPoint ^ | 21 May 03 | Chuck Colson

[Mr. Silverback]

Recently, two University of Pennsylvania researchers announced findings that, in the words of the Washington Post, "could blur the biological line between fathers and mothers."

Writing in the online journal Science, Hans Schoeler and Karin Huebner described how they turned ordinary mouse embryonic stem cells into eggs capable of being fertilized.

What’s more, the stem cells they used were from males. Thus, if the technique used by the two researchers is applicable to humans, it could be possible for a gay couple to have children "with one man contributing sperm and the other fresh eggs bearing his own genes."

That raises a new question: Should the man who contributed the cells for the egg be recognized as the child’s "mother"? If not, what is he?

Scientists are abuzz. John Eppig, a mouse geneticist, told the Washington Post that "the mind boggles with potential wild applications of this stuff." Lee Silver, molecular biologist and bioethicist at Princeton, told the Post that the results "[break] down all the classic barriers in terms of sexual reproduction, with none of the problems of cloning."

But others were less enthusiastic. Douglas Johnson of National Right to Life, for one, called the results a potential big step toward opening "human embryo farms."

Johnson is right. But the even bigger threat comes from the hubris of researchers who feel free to "blur the biological lines between mothers and fathers." Even the risk of fundamentally changing what it means to be human doesn’t seem to deter them.

It should, for even dyed-in-the-wool Darwinists would agree that sexual reproduction involving fathers and mothers must serve some important purpose. They would recognize that the only animal species without distinct roles for the sexes in reproduction are lower species like amoebas and paramecium.

Darwinists like Stephen Pinker of MIT would affirm that the differences between male and female go beyond their roles in reproduction. They are different in many ways—physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Christians, of course, affirm all of this and more. The respective roles and contributions of both sexes are what Genesis is referring to when it says "male and female He created them." The history and destiny of life is inextricably tied up in that phrase. It is sheer madness to tamper with the distinction.

Christians shouldn’t let anyone say that these concerns make us "Luddites" who fear technology. Bill McKibben, a science writer whom no one would call a Luddite, shares the same concerns. In his book, Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age, he writes that the questions posed by biotechnology threaten to alter what it means to be human and are too important to be left to scientists. He asks, "Must we forever grow in reach and power. . . . Or can we, should we, ever say, ‘Enough’?"

Exactly—which is why BreakPoint keeps focusing on bioethics, which raises the most profound moral questions. Christians ought to sound the alarm now, before science without limits blurs lines that were meant to be distinct and achieves what C. S. Lewis called the "abolition of man."

[MHGinTN]

^ = bttt

[MHGinTN]

Thus, if the technique used by the two researchers is applicable to humans, it could be possible for a gay couple to have children "with one man contributing sperm and the other fresh eggs bearing his own genes." Since eggs don't 'naturally' come from even homosexual males, first a clone of the target 'faux female' msut be conceived, then the stem cells are extracted from that individual human ORGANISM, to be manipulated into functioning as 'fresh eggs'. Is that using cloning? Is that 'absent the problems of cloning'?

[f.Christian]

The shakers practiced total seperation of the sexes ... they wanted and practiced --- extinction (( "avoid the end times trouble" )) !

[RightWhale]

Indeed they did. It's easy to see why they didn't get fresh recruits in huge numbers. Still, they lasted many years and weren't isolated in just one community. They never got up to the ideal [for that time] 2,500 members in one economic community. Socialists, of course, watched Shakers closely and took their continued existence as proof that the communitarian approach would work. Socialism, Biblical Communism even, born and practiced in America, and long before Marx.

[RightWhale]

Sure sounds like cloning, pure and simple.

[MHGinTN]

And that's the essence of what bothers me, RW. The people hoping to slip cloning in 'under the door' are purposely dissembling the truth by differentiating reproductive cloning from 'therapeutic cloning'. Both reprodcue the individual from whom the nuclear mass is donated. Therapeutic cloning merely assumes that the end use for the cloned individual human ORGANISM defines the efficacy, as in 'we won't let this cloned being grow to 40 week delivery, so it's not a human being by our chosen definition.' And the lying S.O.B.s will get away with if the people cannot be better informed before the legislative maneuvers occur!

[RightWhale]

Even better, they can do this factory style. Imagine a square mile of testtubes and plumbing like a uranium enrichment centrifuge plant, but rolling out individually packaged but otherwise identical squalling babies. Kinda raises the mothering instinct, doesn't it.

[f.Christian]

Funny ... in the springtime --- 'winter' quakers would flew the coop !

[cgk]

Thus, if the technique used by the two researchers is applicable to humans, it could be possible for a gay couple to have children "with one man contributing sperm and the other fresh eggs bearing his own genes."

Just wonderful. Hijacking that which is reserved exclusively for Women, as ordained by GOD. Let's SUE!

[nomad]

You think thats bad, there is a British OB-GYN and researcher in invitro-fertilization named Winston that believes it is possible for MEN to carry a fetus to term, NO BULL; do a key word search on "Male Pregnancy" using a good search engine, be prepared for some sick stuff though, (there are freeks that are into this subject) god help us in this "brave (sick) new world".

[nomad]

21st century Storm-Troopers? A future clone war in the making, foretold by George Lucas, the 20th century Nostradamus. I wouldn`t discount it, after all, they said man would never fly.

[nomad]

Although I would imagine they would use some sort of engineered tissue technique; artificial womb of some sort. From what I have read, they have been making some break throughs in Angiogenesis, if memory serves, cancer related primarily though they are working in the field of organ replacement as well (imagine the MEGA-bucks there), a real double edged sword, huh?

[MHGinTN]

There was a recent long discussion on parthenogenesis in one of the FR essay threads I posted. I'll dig it up if you're interested.

[cornelis]

the hubris of researchers who feel free to "blur the biological lines between mothers and fathers."

They are right in mentioning abolition.

The blur they are speaking of, what is the origin of the blurring. Is it natural or unnatural? I'm not sure they do well to draw this into the area of evolutionary theory, which is distinct argument and should be treated separately. Although that seems to be impossible. I have no idea why evolutionary theorists have to pontificate outside of their area of expertise either.

Perhaps it is politics that draws these disparate disputes to bear on the same issue.