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Former talk show host Rosie O’Donnell was ready to adopt her second child, until she got some unexpected news from the doctor. That’s when the birth mother, Jami Weaver, said the child was rejected. Jami Weaver claims that the agreement fell through when she learned her unborn child was diagnosed with gastroschisis (a congenital deformity where the bowel protrudes through the abdominal wall) last summer. 'Rosie told me she could not handle having a special needs child,' she said. Perhaps if she’d have done some research, O’Donnell would have discovered that babies with gastroschisis have a 90 percent survival rate,...

....Celebs spoke out and joined Elton John in calling for a boycott of Dolce & Gabbana on Sunday after its founders criticized gay adoption and “synthetic children” conceived through in vitro fertilization..... ....“Your archaic thinking is out of step with the times, just like your fashions,” he continued. “I shall never wear Dolce and Gabbana ever again. #BoycottDolceGabbana.”

Brian Sheldon and Matthew Shaffer are one of several gay Victorian couples taking advantage of California's liberal IVF laws. The couple ordered the two babies -- even choosing their preferred sex, male -- through US IVF pioneer Dr Jeffrey Steinberg. The Australian Family Association believed it was tantamount to "trafficking in children", while the two fathers yesterday defended their decision to start a family. "The issue is not really a gay issue. It's a reproductive rights issue for everybody," Mr Sheldon said. Dr Steinberg said an increasing number of gay Australians were visiting his Californian fertility centre to start a...

Note: Since recording this script, the fertility clinic in Los Angeles, which announced in February that it would be allowing couples to pre-select embryos based on gender, hair, and eye color, has retracted the hair and eye color pre-selection option due to public outcry. While BreakPoint is encouraged to hear that the company has changed these practices, the issue addressed in this commentary still remains a very real threat—one that Christians should speak out on.For more information you can read the FoxNews article on the retraction and view the clinic's website. Mr. and Mrs. Jones want a baby. They...

A California firm called Fertility Institutes is advertising gender selection for in vitro fertilization (IVF), claiming to be the first to offer tests to pre-determine eye, skin, and hair color. LifeSiteNews.com reports on the rapidly growing trend of sex-selection abortion, an idea many have considered since IVF technology was forming in the 1970s. The Fertility Institute's advertisement guarantees a 100-percent success rate and reads as follows: "For the first time ever, patients having genetic screening for abnormal chromosome conditions in their embryos will be able to elect expanded testing that can greatly increase the odds of achieving a healthy pregnancy...

Want a baby with blonde hair and green eyes? Get your wallet out. A Los Angeles fertility clinic is offering a new service that would allow couples to choose their baby's physical traits, including eye and hair color. The LA Fertility Institutes said it has already received half a dozen requests for the service and expects the first designer baby to be born next year. "I would not say this is a dangerous road," Dr. Jeff Steinberg, the director of the clinic said. "It's an uncharted road." [Snip] In a recent U.S. survey of 999 people who sought genetic counseling,...

http://www.zenit.org/article-25260?l=english ZE09030310 - 2009-03-03Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-25260?l=englishKids Made-to-Order: Science Gone Awry Bishop Sgreccia Points to Instinct of Manipulation ROME, MARCH 3, 2009 (Zenit.org).- A Los Angeles-based fertility clinic offering would-be parents a child made-to-order -- complete with the desired skin tone or hair color -- is an example of science when it is not put at the service of the good, says Bishop Elio Sgreccia.The retired president of the Pontifical Academy for Life spoke to Vatican Radio today about an offer from The Fertility Institutes, to give would-be parents the physical traits they want in their child -- green eyes, for example,...

A new study by researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center indicates that consumers are more interested in using genetic technologies to screen for life threatening diseases than in using the technologies to screen offspring for enhanced traits. Specifically, consumers appear ready to use biotechnologies to test for life altering and threatening medical conditions like mental retardation, blindness, deafness, cancer, heart disease, dwarfism and shortened lifespan from death by 5 years of age—but what they’re not interested in is prenatal genetic testing to screen for traits like tall stature, superior athletic ability and superior intelligence. “Our research has discovered that although...

Wanting to have children who follow in one’s footsteps is an understandable desire. But a coming article in the journal Fertility and Sterility offers a fascinating glimpse into how far some parents may go to ensure that their children stay in their world — by intentionally choosing malfunctioning genes that produce disabilities like deafness or dwarfism. The article reviews the use of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, or P.G.D., a process in which embryos are created in a test tube and their DNA is analyzed before being transferred to a woman’s uterus. In this manner, embryos destined to have, for example, cystic...

DEAF parents should be allowed to screen their embryos so they can pick a deaf child over one that has all its senses intact, according to the chief executive of the Royal National Institute for Deaf and Hard of Hearing People (RNID). Jackie Ballard, a former Liberal Democrat MP, says that although the vast majority of deaf parents would want a child who has normal hearing, a small minority of couples would prefer to create a child who is effectively disabled, to fit in better with the family lifestyle. Ballard’s stance is likely to be welcomed by other deaf organisations,...

PARENTS of sick children in Britain will be allowed to use IVF to create "spare-part babies" under controversial laws published yesterday. The legislation will dramatically relax rules on IVF clinics creating "saviour siblings" who can help cure their older brothers and sisters of medical conditions such as leukemia. Experts said that one day they could create a "designer baby" with kidneys perfectly compatible with a sibling suffering renal failure. More immediately, saviour siblings could give umbilical cord blood or bone marrow to family members in the hope of treating conditions such as sickle cell anaemia. The Government's Human Fertilisation and...

The successful efforts of the Human Genome Project rightfully stand amongst the greatest intellectual achievements of human history. The brilliance and diligence displayed in this research cannot be quantified or described in a way that does it all justice. However, the question now becomes what we actually do with the knowledge of the human genome? Given the previous history of human technology, the heroic industry and intelligence of the scientists who achieved this discovery will in no way guarantee that it won’t fall into the hands of evil despots or malicious haters. It becomes possible that human beings as we...

Genetic Screening Can Help Prevent Maladies Later In Life, But How Far Should Pre-Selecting Embryos Go? Thoreau said that every child begins the world again. Thoreau was right, of course. But he never had children of his own. He never spent nine months in the dark, wondering if his baby would be born whole, healthy, or at all. But what was once a final verdict at childbirth has been transformed, in many cases, by a series of medical choices that can be made long before the first labor pains. New York University's Dr. Jamie Grifo helped pioneer a technique that...

April 26, 2007     First designer babies to beat breast cancer   Mark Henderson, Science Editor   Two couples whose families have been ravaged by breast cancer are to become the first to screen embryos to prevent them having children at risk of the disease, The Times has learnt. Tests will allow the couples to take the unprecedented step of selecting embryos free from a gene that carries a heightened risk of the cancer but does not always cause it. The move will reignite controversy over the ethics of embryo screening. An application to test for the BRCA1...

FRONT ROYAL, Virginia, April 2, 2007 (POP.org/LifeSiteNews.com) - For a number of years now, a great deal of discussion has taken place among scientists and in the popular media about the genetic engineering of children. Will it soon be possible, for prices widely affordable at least to the upper-middle class, to guarantee that children have a high IQ, or excellent athletic ability, or be over 6 feet tall, or have blond hair and blue eyes? Is it right to commodify children in this way, and have parents choosing options as they do with cars? And wouldn’t it be boring to...

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...

British fertility specialists have developed a powerful new way to test embryos for inherited diseases, offering hundreds of couples their first realistic chance of having healthy children. The procedure has been hailed as a big advance, boosting the number of diseases clinics can test for from about 200 to nearly 6,000. It will allow doctors to test for the first time a vast array of inherited diseases for which the specific genetic mutation is not known, such as Duchenne's muscular dystrophy (DMD) and some forms of cystic fibrosis. Using the technique, doctors can examine every embryo created for a couple...

The Chinese want boys, and the Canadians want girls. If they have enough money, they come to the United States to choose the sex of their babies. Well-off foreign couples are getting around laws banning sex selection in their home countries by coming to American soil — where it's legal — for medical procedures that can give them the boy, or girl, they want. "Some people spend $50,000 to $70,000 for a BMW car and think nothing of it, but this is a life that's going to be with us forever," said Robert, an Australian who asked that his last...

Note: This commentary may not be suitable for young children. Please use parental discretion. Leann Mischel, a Pennsylvania college professor, was ready to have a second child. And she wanted the new baby to have the same father her son did. The problem was that Mischel had no idea who he was: The father of her son was “Donor 401” at a sperm bank. And the bank had sold out of Donor 401’s genetic material. But Mischel was in luck. As the Washington Post put it, Carla Schouten, another sperm-bank mother from San Jose, had “the gift of a lifetime...

A WOMAN is pregnant with Britain’s first designer baby selected to prevent an inherited cancer, The Times can reveal. Her decision to use controversial genetic-screening technology will ensure that she does not pass on to her child the hereditary form of eye cancer from which she suffers. Although they did not have fertility problems, the woman and her partner created embryos by IVF. This allowed doctors to remove a cell and test it for the cancer gene, so only unaffected embryos were transferred to her womb. The couple are the first to take advantage of a relaxation in the rules...