"Embryo Bank" Stirs Ethics Fears, Washington Post (1/6/07)
They were talking about this on KGO yesterday afternoon.
I just recently started getting into talk radio. My Camry's original junky 1990 stereo was only able to receive AM bands and had a tape player that didn't work.
Haha, do any of you remember listening to tapes? Some of my younger subscribers were probably just being born while Katy, Jenny and I were making each other mixed tapes back in middle school.
Now that my dad's installed the fancy-schmancy stereo system (complete with a CD player and a working FM band 
), I'm finding that I still want to listen to talk radio. You get such a wide spectrum of people on the air. Ultra-liberals, ultra-conservatives, and everyone in between. I love it!
I want to hear your thoughts on a topic that came on as I was driving home from church.
For those of you reading this before 12 PM today, you can listen to the KGO archive, if you feel so inclined. The program's available on Windows Media Player [link] and RealPlayer [link]. I should warn you that the program's about an hour long and has these creepy breaks of silence where the commercials originally were.
The Abraham Center of Life in San Antonio, TX is the first fertility center to sell pre-made embryos. Typically, couples going through infertility treatments select sperm and egg donors separately. This center will actually pre-create embryos and either transfer them to a client's womb or a surrogate, which they can arrange for.
They only accept eggs from donors in their 20's with some college education, and they only accept sperm from donors who have an advanced education degree (PhD, law). Donors must undergo a series of health tests, and have no criminal record or family history of mental illness. Prospective clients can see pictures of both donors as babies, children, and sometimes adults.
Some people are arguing that this is no different from the Hitler's eugenics movement, where we seek to improve the gene pool by getting rid of undesirable traits. Some people believe that this is no different from what's already going on, that people seeking infertility treatment already heavily screen egg and sperm donors.
To me, this is just disrespectful to life. We're treating children like some kind of commodity you can order from a catalogue. These are human beings we're dealing with here.
I agree that it's not drastically different from anything we've already been doing. As it says in the Washington Post article, the biggest difference is the price. The center estimates that the total cost should be no more than $10,000, which is less than the typical costs of in vitro fertilization or adoption.
I don't know if I would go so far as to compare it with Hitler's eugenics movement, but really, when you look up "eugenics" in the dictionary, it will say something along the lines of this:
"The study of and methods for improving a species genetically."
Is that not what we're doing here? Sure, you could argue that when we select a person to have children with, we're just as selective. But we don't chose to have kids for the sole purpose of improving the human race. We don't chose our partners solely for their DNA. At least, I hope not.
Even when most marriages were arranged, money was the hugest deciding factor, not genes. Sure, the women were expected to be physically able to have children, in order to keep all of the money and property in the family. The guy, on the other hand, could be a disgusting, diseased, old fart, but if he had lots of money, a functional penis and any semen left in his nasty, wrinkly old balls, he was good to go.
I understand why a pre-made embryo would be appealing to people who want children of their own. I'm all for the improvement of medical technology, but I don't think this is the particular route we should take. The FDA just gave the Abraham Center of Life the okay because all social issues aside, their practice is safe and healthy. But is it socially healthy to promote the creation of children like a Sim, taking what we want and disposing of anything less-than-ideal? That falls beyond the FDA's jurisdiction.
Is anybody else bothered by the Abraham Center of Life's sexist selection process? The women are expected to have some college education and be in their 20's, while the age for the men is unspecified and they're expected to have an advanced degree. I wouldn't be surprised if other fertility centers had similar standards. What we're subtly saying here, is that women are more valuable for their beauty than for their brains.
I'm no scientist here, but it just doesn't seem plausible to me that a child is going to inherently be born with good genes just because both the biological mother and father were attractive and formally educated. Who's to say that all of these ideal characteristics are entirely genetic? Don't both nature AND nurture affect the actual outcome?
And there's still a bit of randomness involved. My siblings and I are each a product of the same two people. We're similar in nature, but no one in my family is the same exact person. Both of my parents are right-handed, yet two out of their four children are lefties.
Even if it could be guaranteed that what you see is what you get, and it's very likely that we may one day advance to that point, this whole movement is just sickening to me. There's nothing wrong with a little human imperfection. As it is, everything and anything in our society is considered expendable. We don't need science to bring us further towards that direction.
Thoughts?
- Miss Natalie Jeanne
"Proud tape-listener of the 21st century"