Posted on 06/21/2007 4:31:25 PM PDT by wagglebee
Baltimore, MD (LifeNews.com) -- A new poll conducted by researchers at Duke University Medical Center and John Hopkins University has real concerns for the pro-life community. It found that 60 percent of Americans who are fertility patients would subject their human embryos to scientific research if they weren't going to birth them.
The poll asked patients what they would do with so-called "leftover" human embryos they had no desire to implant and give birth to in a full-term pregnancy.
The poll found that 22 percent would be interested in donating their embryos to couples who are looking for children to adopt. Pro-life advocates say that more should be done to promote the avenue.
Anne Drapkin Lyerly at Duke, talked about the study in a statement and indicated that it was published in the Science Express publication.
She appeared excited by the results and claimed that using so many of the frozen human embryos in existence would be a scientific boon.
"Previous research indicates that there are approximately 400,000 frozen embryos stored in the United States," she said. "If half of those belong to people who are willing to donate embryos for research, and only half that number were in fact donated, there could still be 100,000 embryos available for research."
Ultimately if that many human lives are taken, they would produce 2,000 to 3,000 usable stem cell lines, the researchers said -- which is 100 times the number currently allowed to receive federal funding.
In the study, some 1,020 people were questions who had human embryos frozen at fertility clinics in California, Colorado, Washington, D.C., Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon and Pennsylvania.
Right. Wanting a baby is such a horrible thing!
You have me figured out completely. What is your address so I can send you a diploma for a PhD in psychology?
Have you adopted a child? If not, why not? If you have bio children, you are a hypocrit for telling us infertile people that we MUST adopt.
I said nothing about feelings. My personal interest has no bearing on this. Embryos do not have to be discarded. As for the “disconnect” between sex and procreation, I have no problem with that, I don’t care what the Pope thinks.
Excuse me for commenting on a thread that’s a few weeks old. I have a life and don’t read every thread on FR every hour.
Wow!!! So many errors in one sentence:
Based on what you have written here, yes, I am afraid I have.
You certainly have a huge chip on your shoulder.
Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. My desire to have a child is God-given. I’m sick of being called selfish by people who have never even met me.
IF I ever had IVF, I would not let any of my embryos be destroyed. There are plenty of alternatives to that.
I never called you selfish. I never called you anything. All I had originally commented on was the 60% of fertility patients that would subject unborn children to research. If you don’t fit in that category, move on. You’re not the first woman I’ve encountered on FR to act like a giant pulsating exposed nerve ending over my comments that don’t pertain to herself. There is medication available for that particular malady, too.
Know God or No God. Ah, to have been born in a test tube.
Unfortunately for you, there’s no cure for being an asshole.
This is not true. No one knows how MUCH a baby an embryo is more than an infertile couple going through IVF. And so many of them use every one of their embryos or donate to a couple who is more than grateful for the chance to adopt the embies.
However, some of the couples going through IVF are liberal and believe in embryonic research, and some others are just mild, meek, uninformed people who may be swayed to donate their embryos to science by a doctor or a nurse or a coordinator, when the couple is told that their embryos could save lives, bla bla bla.
I think it is important to realize that MANY (more than 40% as portrayed in this article, I am sure) couples going through infertility treatments respect each embryo as if it were already a baby. Many couples are religious and/or conservative.
Thus I believe that the pro-life activism community should focus more of an effort to inform couples going through IVF of the true options, and what "donating to science" means. I hope that someone reading this post takes it as info from the inside and doubles the efforts to affect the decisions made by the less-informed couples with embryos available.
Let them know that they can have choice in which other infertile couples receive their embryos, either through their clinic or on private websites where donors can "meet" recipient families. They can specify which area of the country, what religion, no contact or some contact, anything they like, as though they were giving up babies for adoption. Hit them over the head with how grateful THEY were to be able to start their family. Couples desiring donor embryos are just like they are.
I am sorry to be long here, but I think there is a way to affect people's feelings about their embryos. Tell them their embryos are less than 4 weeks away from their beating little hearts. Get the daddies involved. Genes are not everything. Adoption is parenting too. Either raise the babies from all those embies or allow another couple to share in your joy. Thanks for listening.
Thank you so much for writing a well thought out response. I was too angry to be so eloquent.
If these guys want to save embryos instead of just coming on the board and acting all superior because they’ve never had IVF, they’d learn to be a little more gentle and understanding with those of us going through this hellish journey.
As the old saying goes “You catch more flies with honey...”
Some people here have heard that a woman “kills” tens of “embryos” with every IVF cycle. This is probably someone’s misinterpretation of the antral follicles which come to the front of the ovary every month, IVF or not.
It’s not just one egg that is “lost” every month with a woman’s period; about 10-30 come forward, and only one or occasionally two actually ripen and are available for the sperm. These are not embryos (babies) but eggs. And they are lost every month to 11-year-old girls and all menstruating females. Many sperm are obviously lost with each ejaculation as well.
The only truth to that thought, that embryos are killed while cycling, is that many are not chromosomally correct and do die along the way. They would have done this whether the conception took place in a marital bed or in the lab.
I think the more that pro-lifer activists learn about the truths of IVF, the more embryos they can try to save. IVF is a good thing. We just need to be careful and always respect life.
No, but there is a way to prevent it, sweetie.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.