Free Republic

'Embryo Bank' Stirs Ethics Fears Firm Lets Clients Pick Among Fertilized Eggs By Rob Stein Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, January 6, 2007; A01 A Texas company has started producing batches of ready-made embryos that single women and infertile couples can order after reviewing detailed information about the race, education, appearance, personality and other characteristics of the egg and sperm donors. The Abraham Center of Life LLC of San Antonio, the first commercial dealer making embryos in advance for unspecified recipients, was created to help make it easier and more affordable for clients to have babies that match their preferences,...

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...

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) - Scientists in Britain have shown that stem cells extracted from human embryos can develop in the laboratory into the early forms of cells that become eggs or sperm. The research raises the possibility that one day eggs and sperm needed for infertility treatment could be grown in a dish. Preliminary experiments also suggest that scientists may eventually be able to use the technique to create a supply of eggs for cloning. But the more immediate benefit of the work could be a better understanding of why some men and women do not create their own sperm...

"Miracle babies" in the arms of beaming mothers are great public relations for the IVF industry. And a great money-spinner, too. More than a million babies have been born around the world through in vitro fertilisation. Nearly four per cent of all births in Denmark are IVF babies, more than one per cent in the United States. More than half a million embryos live frozen in American IVF clinics. Welcome to the baby business. Twenty-seven years ago, the only way infertile parents could create a family was through adoption. But in 1978 when British researchers Patrick Steptoe and Robert...