We Live in Strange Times: Trying to Create Eggs and Sperm With Embryonic Stem Cells
I have never fully gotten my mind around all of the issues involving reproduction. Women have a near absolute right to abortion--absolute in some places--while at the same time, to ensure that people who want babies can have them, we almost literally move mountains. For example: Using IVF, surrogate mothers, purchasing of embryos from poor countries (the latter two being resources exploited by the rich in biological colonialism), paying eugenically correct young women thousands of dollars to endanger their health as egg "donors," manipulated embryo creation to produce children with three biological parents, and in the future, some want reproductive cloning to allow lesbian couples to have children without using any male contributions.
This is all in furtherance of the ongoing coup d' culture that will supplant Judeo-Christian-humanistic equality/sanctity of human life values with "hedonism"--which I define broadly as a near absolute right to fulfill any desire or impulse--as one of the three reigning values of society (the other two, as I see them in my early thinking on this, being utilitarianism--about which I am sure--and radical environmentalism, about which I am 80% convinced.)
Case in point: Scientists are hot on the trail of creating sperm and eggs from embryonic stem cells, for the creation of embryos for study of genetic diseases. Beyond this, the field is now being elevated to the sacrosanct status of a "woman's health issue." From an interview in the New York Times with Stanford researcher Renee A. Reijo:
But this niche market for particularized reproductive biotech is very small. The real agenda, I believe, is solving the egg issue with regard to human cloning. If that could be done, if tens of millions of eggs could be made from embryonic stem cells, then human cloning could be perfected on its way to therapeutic cloning, fetal farming, learning how to genetically enhance, and reproductive cloning.Q. IN SPEECHES, YOU SAY THAT STEM CELL RESEARCH SHOULD BE THOUGHT OF AS A WOMEN'S HEALTH ISSUE. WHY?
A. Because in my lab, we're using stem cell research to look for ways to make fertility treatments safer and more rational. Considering all the heartbreak and expense of infertility treatments, this sort of research is something I believe women have a big stake in defending. Right now, we don't fully know what a healthy embryo in a Petri dish looks like.Because of this, I.V.F. clinics often insert multiple embryos into women to try to increase the odds of a successful implantation. Patients frequently have multiple births or devastating miscarriages. Half the time, the embryos don't make it. If we could figure out what a healthy embryo looked like and what the best media was to grow it in, we'd cut down on that.
Meanwhile, children go unadopted and millions of babies who might have been adopted are never allowed to be born.
Like I said, we live in strange times.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 8:03 AM
7 Comments
7 Comments:
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I know SHS isn't concerned about gay marriage, but for gays and lesbians the female sperm and male eggs have a lot more to do with justifying gay marriage than cloning. They'll argue that society can't deny two people who share a biological child-i.e. one who shares genes from both parents-the right to marry and raise their child together. This of course uses children as means, polticial tools and weapons for one's own ends.
Whatever happend to the health and well-being of the kids? Jeez. I swear, this all stems from fear of death. People who want to be immortal don't care who they step on or kill to get their way.
And by the way, there are two categories of "bad" in this article: Miscarriages and multiple births. Well, most women who have successful multiple implantations don't have multiple births, they have selective abortions to trim down the number of kids they have. So what category of "bad" does that fall under?
My prediction is that any children conceived from eggs and/or sperm which were in turn manufactured from embryonic stem cells will have major health problems. Just my prediction. It's a screwy way to make children, and these things are pretty delicate. Lots of places for genetic damage and problems to enter the picture. You would think they would care about _that_ even if they didn't care about the embryos destroyed to obtain the stem cells.
Luckily we can ban this sort of thing, right? I don't understand the anguished helpless attitude about how bad this is going to be, when all we have to do is propose and support a simple law to prohibit it and then there won't be any major health problems because there won't be any children born from that procedure.
I think the law should be like the PCBE's 2004 recommendation, or like Missouri's 2006 A2 law, but prohibiting creating non egg+sperm embryos, not just implanting them.
There will be an opportunity to get this law passed when Obama addresses the issue of federal recognition for Civil Unions. Please support the Egg and Sperm Civil Union Compromise.
John Howard -
You're talking about a guy who said that knowing when a baby is a person is "above his pay grade." How can a guy who says something like that support any kind of legislation that requires us to treat a "mass of cells" created a particular way differnet from a "mass of cells" created other ways?
Because he doesn't consider a person to be a mass of cells, and the concern is people trying to create people through genetic engineering.
And he can support a law like that because he's looking for a way to establish civil unions, and conception rights is a useful distinction to keep marriage meaningful and between a man and a woman, while giving all the other rights of marriage. He supports civil unions and believes marriage is between a man and a woman. Also, his Science Advisor is into sustainable ecology, he's not a biotech-transhumanism booster, and genetic engineering and same-sex conception and designer babies is not sustainable, it is wasteful. So he'd find support there, too.
I am very hopeful that he'd jump at the Compromise if he were aware of it.
We can go on from there to stopping embryonic research, if it even continues to exist after the main goal of it is prohibited.
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