Hermenuetics

Comments

It seems as though much of your focus is focusing the ethical questions on scientists. Though, their are ethical issues that scientists need to deal with, the couples who buy and store these embroyos are just as ethically involved in the ethical questions as well.

The questions are not the same, but their is still the same amount of responsibility that these couples hold since they are in control of a life or potential life.

Posted By: David Pulliam | April 16, 2009 11:18 AM

Americans have a sense of entitlement in so many things. Having a natural born child is one those expectations and some of the fertility practices now commonplace feed upon that sense of entitlement. Of course, if you want a child, then someone in the medical field will do everything (and anything) to fulfil that want.

However, there are not many guarantees in life. You may not be beautiful, healthy, find an ideal spouse OR have a natural born child. If you choose to go down the IV route, there are some consequences to that action -- painful procedures, great expenses, often disappointment and eventually the question of what to do with the unwanted embroyos.

Our attitudes as Americans (perhaps being selfish or self-centered are some main ones) has led us into some really questionable ethical areas in reproductive areas but also in our present economic situation.

Posted By: Linda Rogde | April 16, 2009 7:43 PM

Ethics are only a problem for people who worry about them. The mere fact that someone considers any given act unethical is not, in and of itself, sufficient reason for refraining to perform the action. Unless it can be demonstrated that there are practical negative consequences for these techniques, and no practical objection has yet surfaced, then there is no serious reason for people not to use them.

Posted By: Chuck | April 17, 2009 12:23 PM

"No practical objection has yet surfaced." That ought to ease the conscience of anyone inflicting injustice on a human being who either will not or cannot offer such objection.

God help us all if we generally resort to or accept this particular rationalization.

Posted By: DHS Targets Me a RWE | April 17, 2009 9:09 PM

Let's hope the following conversation never takes place:
Little girl: Mummy, where did I come from?
Mother: Darling, you were wonderfully conceived through test-tube technology, then implanted into my tummy so that Daddy and I could love you and raise you as our family. Your brother Timmy was also started this way.
Little girl: Mummy, why don't I have any other brothers and sisters?
Mummy: Well, you do dear - 1 boy embryo and 2 girl embryos. We decided, as we already have a boy and a girl, to give them to a nice doctor who can turn them into cell lines for medical research. He said they might help sick people. I think the boy embryo is a cell line for insulin production now, and the 2 girls are still in the medical research centre frozen storage, but they may be used at any time now, to help people.
Little girl: (Screams, and runs crying out of the room)

COMMENT. Does this stretch things too far? I think not: how can we put one embryo to use for one noble purpose: the start of a new life, and destroy the other living embryo to help someone with an illness, even if incurable? Especially when their own stem cells, or placental chord stem cells can be used in almost every case (see latest research using third party diabetic stem cell lines to provide insulin creation). An embryo has all the potentiality to become a new human being, other then the environment, the mother. It is not a scientific or medical 'by product' for use in medical research. That's my view.
We are created as embryos - every living human being on earth began that way, so we cannot downgrade the importance of the intact embryo. If it's not healthy, it will not survive, but that does not mean it can become an instrument of medical curiosity, an extra piece of protoplasm at the end of a microscope, to be prodded and poked and experimented upon.
We are also made in the image and likeness of God, not at 3 weeks, or 5 weeks, or 10 weeks, but at conception. This is what we have on best evidence from the Bible, that the human spirit exists within the human embryo.
The Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary, and she conceived. There is not a vestige of thought that somehow Jesus already existed inside Mary as an embryo to which the Holy Spirit added something special. Jesus began, as we all do, as a fertilised embryo, having been first fertilised by the partnering splendour of the Holy Spirit, into the wholeness of the fertilised unborn embryo. THis is the crux of the matter, and the most important issue, I believe. For Jesus to be fully man and fully divine, the two natures had to be brought together at conception. There is no '14 day wait' which some theologians ascribe to, at which time the embryo somehow becomes viable. It was viable from the nanosecond of conception. Wonderful! Marvellous! So God knits us together in our mother's womb, and so Jesus also was knit together. Therefore let us give these precious embryos the respect and care due to them, and not allow them to be used for any purpose other than the beginning of a new human life. Praise God!

Posted By: Judith Dowson | April 18, 2009 5:27 AM

Thanks for mentioning the story. One complicating factor is that human reproduction, in the body and in the lab, is very inefficient. Many fertilized eggs die in the normal process--some self destruct because of genetic errors, others don't implant and pass out of the body, or implant and them miscarry.Of the embryos in storage, only about 11-12% would survive and become children if allowed to thaw and be transferred.

Posted By: bob smietana | April 18, 2009 2:46 PM

Christ's Church teaches that life begins at conception. This is not only physical life but spiritual life. Tell me, how do you freeze the soul?

Posted By: Fr.Ian Yorston | April 21, 2009 10:15 AM