IVF babies ‘risk major diseases’

Scientists have discovered that the DNA of babies conceived through IVF differs from that of other children, putting them at greater risk of diseases such as diabetes and obesity later in life.

The new research could explain why IVF babies tend to be at higher risk of low birth weight, defects and rare metabolic disorders.

The changes are not in the genes themselves but in the mechanism that switches them on and off, the study of which is known as epigenetics.

“These epigenetic differences have the potential to affect embyronic development and foetal growth, as well as influencing long-term patterns of gene expression associated with increased risk of many human diseases,” said Professor Carmen Sapienza...

"Would you treat a child born through an IVF treatment, any differently than one conceived naturally?"

Yes; no; not exactly. I'm not sure what you're getting at, here. I happen to have two sons, one born to me and one adopted, and I love them both and treat them differently (that would be to say, I treat theam "individually") as their different talents, temperaments, and circumstances warrant. It does not, I hope, involve invidious discrimination: they're just strikingly different.

"...and if not, then hasn’t the procedure helped the parents achieve what they initially sought, overcoming a natural obstacle?"

But I do treat them differently. I hope I will not confuse the issue if I try to get at your point in a different way: IVF helped the couple get a child, as pursuing adoption helped my husband and me a get a child. It's the same in that sense.

It's different, though, for other reasons, which I will try to untangle here.

IVF is commonly a matter of just one of the couple contributing genetic material: the wife's ova, with donor (more accurate to say: vendor) sperm; or egg-vendor ova, with the husband's sperm. Or it could be vendor all the way: Couple A+B getting ova from Woman X and sperm from Man Y, and then having an embryo generated in vitro and implanted which is "theirs" as paying customers, but not related to either of them genetically.

As child-getting, it succeeds (they get a child) but as fertility-treatment, it fails. IVF is no more a fertility tretment than adoption is. The underlying fertility problem, as a therapeutic matter, is not addressed.

But IVF is also morally distinguishable from adoption, and morally objectionable, for these reasons:

Adoption is responding to the needs of a child who is for whatever reason bereft of the attachment and care of his natural mother and father. The adoptive parents didn't cause the child to be born bereft of his natural birthright: they didn't arrange for the natural parents to beget him and then turn him over; on the contrary, they are responding to what everyone sees as an unfortunate circumstance which has already happened: he has no mother and father, and he needs them.
Adoption doesn't violate the strictly interpersonal nature of human procreation. IVF does. It turns procreation from a personal event we have in common with the whole human race, which constitues part of our human dignity, to a laboratory procedure by which we become a kind of property.

I refer you to the 1992 Tennessee Frozen Human Embryo Case so you can contemplate the probably unforseen, but inevitable result.

Not wanting to turn this into a full-fledged essay, let me just summarize here: One more step in the humanization of the human race.

Adoption requires sacrifice of a nature that not many couples are capable of bearing. The innate drive to have genetic progeny is an extremely powerful one, and this is where IVF comes in, for those unfortunate couples who, for various reasons, end up being infertile. The whole question becomes whether the State has any right to deny an infertile couple the chance to have their own progeny.

The morality argument here, is in fact, another dimension of the war between religion and evolution.

It will never be resolved, except after great extremes of time and knowledge accumulation.

I don't know that there's a war between religion and evolution, tout court, since there are various different religions and various different versions of evolution. Certainly there's no war between my religion (Catholicism) and the idea that God has the power to cause different life forms to be brought forth through material processes, all the way up through the physical origin of Homo sapiens through predecessor non-human species.

I am not sure what this has to do with IVF, but perhaps you'll explain further?

"The whole question becomes whether the State has any right to deny an infertile couple the chance to have their own progeny."

No, that's not the whole question. In fact, the way you state it is tendentious, as if we shared an underlying assumption that infertile people possess a "right" to create laboratory progeny. It's like the homosexual activists saying that the state of Tennessee denies the "right" to gay marriage, or the socialists claiming the state is denying the "human right" of universal health insurance.

First you have to prove that such a right exists.

I say it does not; and that the state has a legitimate interest in preserving human children's status as persons rather than products or property. This, you will discover, is the point of the 1992 Tennessee Frozen Human Embryo trial. Which, by the way, settled for the concept that conceived children are property. This is a position truly obnoxious to a genuine human right.

I am not sure what this has to do with IVF, but perhaps you'll explain further?

To be able to have genetic progeny, is the critical ingredient for evolution. IVF comes in right here, with regard to infertile couples.

Marriage is one thing. Reproduction is an entirely different thing. One entity here does not require the other. One entity here is man-made, while the other is innate among all living species.

One entity here is not bothered by man-made laws. That entity isn't marriage.

I'm all for genetic progeny, as an end, but I object to the use of explorative or dehumanizing means.

Surely you and I must agree that the means must be moral as well as the end. For instance, genetic progeny can be, and are, gotten by many objectionable means, including rape, concubinage, surrogacy, fornication with a minor, prostitution, etc. We would concur (I suppose) that therefore it is reasonable to agree with the end, but not with the means.

I am convinced that IVF in an objectionable means. And why? Because, I would argue, a child has a natural right to be conceived in the loving embrace of his married parents, and any choice which deliberately deprives him of this natural and honorable beginning, does him dishonor.

It's a matter of respecting the child's natural birthright.

And because,secondly, human society itself ought to take carefully-considered and reasonable steps to curb human progeny from any form of abuse. That could include (notice I said "could" include) a public policy of discouraging abortion, sexual intercourse outside of marriage, IVF and human experimentation involving embryos, as well as encouraging marriage and the therapies needed to help married couples achieve their desired fertility.

You have not mentioned the moral and legal implications of the Tennssee Frozen Human Embryo case, which I cited twice. This case illustrates the one offensive public corollary of IFV: the commoditization of offspring.

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