Reproductive Technologies

I have always argued that the time to discuss cutting edge technologies that will shape humanity is BEFORE they are achieved not after.  As a society we need to decide NOW what kinds of limits we want to put on genetics, cloning and genetic engineering.  The minute the headline reads, "Cloned human baby born" it is too late.  But this requires diligence and a proactive approach to understanding what biotechnology is capable of.  Most people just do not want to deal with it.

The Center for Genetics and Society, in collaboration with Mothers for a Human Future among others, has launched a website called Bioconversations that gets everyday people thinking about issues in genetics and reproductive technologies.  While I do not agree with everything that the Center for Genetics and Society promotes (and wish they would do more than just ask open ended questions), I applaud their efforts to begin conversations that not many are willing to have.  Their home page speaks to what I try to do with this blog:

We urge you to consider the questions presented in each video in this series, use the resources at www.BioConversations.org to learn more, talk with your family, friends, and neighbors, keep learning and talking, and get involved as you see fit—as soon as you can. Time is of the essence. The technology is being developed very rapidly. We all have to work hard to ensure that Americans from all walks of life have a say in what should—and should not—be done—before it’s too late.

Why do you need to be a part of this conversation? Lightning-fast developments in genetic, reproductive, biomedical, and other technologies are driving us into new, uncharted, and potentially dangerous territory. The momentum of technological development and market dynamics is considerable. In addition, a small but vocal group of people who call themselves “transhumanists” is strongly promoting a future in which human beings are technologically re-engineered.

The transhumanist campaign underscores the pressing need for all citizens to get up to speed—and quickly—on a wide range of technologies with profound implications for us as human beings. It also points to an urgent need for diverse voices and diverse points of view to join in the public conversation about the use of these technologies.

BioConversations is designed to bring more people into this crucial conversation. We urge you to use the resources on this site and spark a conversation about these new groundbreaking technologies by sharing these resources with your family, friends, and neighbors—-and keep the conversation going.

Here is the first installment of 5 videos they have created to get us thinking about the future of our species:

The Daily Mail reports that male infertility is on the rise and some are calling it a crisis:

One in five men could suffer from fertility problems. And scientists have warned that it's just going to get worse...

There's a crisis brewing, but it has nothing to do with the economic deficit or the current political uncertainty. Scientists are warning that rising levels of male infertility have become so perilous that it is a serious 'public health issue'. And some go even further.

Professor Niels Skakkebaek, of the University of Copenhagen, describes the issue 'as important as global warming'. Last week, one science writer even suggested, in starkly terrifying terms, that if scientists from Mars were to study the male reproductive system, they would possibly conclude that man was destined for rapid extinction.

And if it continues, this trend could indicate men are on a path to becoming completely infertile within a few generations.

From USA Today

Women have been taking synthetic estrogen as chemical birth control (better known as The Pill) for decades and then excreting it in their urine.  These synthetic hormones are not being removed from the water supply and the levels are not even being monitored.  Scientists are discovering that synthetic hormones are affecting the fertility of fish.  From the Seattle Post Intelligencer:

Birth control may be harming state's salmon
Synthetic estrogen in water seems to affect reproduction

Birth-control pills can curb the reproduction of more than just the women taking them. Western Washington scientists have found that synthetic estrogen -- a common ingredient in oral contraceptives -- can drastically reduce the fertility of male rainbow trout.

The man-made compounds are showing up in waterways around the nation -- pumped into rivers, lakes and Puget Sound with water from sewage-treatment plants.

And they're being found at levels that can harm fish, possibly even this region's struggling salmon populations....

The findings are likely to fuel concerns about the environmental effects of chemicals that aren't being filtered out by sewage plants, including pharmaceuticals and pesticides that can mimic hormones.

In frogs, river otters and fish, scientists are "finding the presence of female hormones making the male species less male," said Doug Myers, wetlands and habitat specialist for the Puget Sound Action Team, the government agency coordinating restoration of the Sound.

There are no standards for how much synthetic estrogen and other hormones can be released in sewage and wastewater, and treatment plants generally do not monitor for it.

If synthetic estrogen can affect the "maleness" of fish, it such a stretch to think that the rise in male infertility might be caused by the Pill?  That synthetic estrogen in our water supply is making human males less male?  That a pill that takes a normal female cycle and turns it upside down would also affect male fertility in unexpected ways? Why is that NOT one of the many possible reasons cited by this article?

I wonder how infertile men everywhere would feel if they found out that it was synthetic estrogen in their water supply that might be the cause of their problems.  I wonder if that is why scientists and others are dumbfounded by the utter silence on this issue.  Could it be that the Pill is, like abortion, a sacred cow that no matter the devastation it wreaks, we would not dare speak a word against it? 

After all, the USA Today's celebration of The Pill's 50th birthday says that it is about equality.  Could it be that women who choose to be temporarily infertile maybe causing males to be infertile as well?  (That's equality for ya.)

Some people think a rise of male infertility is just fine.  We need less people on this planet anyway right?  Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it.  I have said many times that fiction often contains truth.  What seems impossible in a book or movie often comes to pass and often sooner than we would think. 

I am reminded of Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake. This book if full of gems, but the "BlyssPluss Pill" really hits the nail on the head.  What is BlyssPluss?  It is a pill designed by Crake, the species-splicing genius, to do three things at once.  First, it would "protect the user against all known sexually transmitted diseases."  Second, it would provide "an unlimited supply of libido and sexual prowess" while "eliminating feelings of low self-worth."  Third, it would "prolong youth."

But that is not all.  From a conversation between Jimmy, the hero, and Crake:

    These three capabilities would be the selling points, said Crake; but there would be a fourth, which would not be advertised.  The BlyssPluss Pill would also act as a sure-fire one-time-does-it-all-birth-control pill, for male and female alike, thus automatically lowering the population level...

    "So basically you're going to sterilize people without them knowing it under the guise of giving them the ultra in orgies?"

    "That's a crude way of putting it, " said Crake.

There is just one catch.  Without giving too much away, it is the BlyssPluss Pill, and components therein, that eradicates the human race.  This guy thinks that scientists from Mars would conclude that is exactly where the human race is headed.

Insightful and prophetic?  I think so.

Lately it seems that some people are having a love affair with China's draconian policies.  From Diane Francis who wrote the following in the Financial Post:

The "inconvenient truth" overhanging the UN's Copenhagen conference is not that the climate is warming or cooling, but that humans are overpopulating the world.

A planetary law, such as China's one-child policy, is the only way to reverse the disastrous global birthrate currently, which is one million births every four days....

China has proven that birth restriction is smart policy. Its middle class grows, all its citizens have housing, health care, education and food, and the one out of five human beings who live there are not overpopulating the planet.

To Thomas Friedman who wrote this in the NY Times:

One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages.

I am wondering if Francis and Friedman are referring to this story in the UK Times Online about China's "enlightened" "smart policy" that is incarcerating and forcibly sterilizing people for violating the one-child rule:

About 1,300 people are being held in cramped conditions in towns across Puning county, in Guangdong Province, as officials try to put pressure on couples who have illegal children to come forward for sterilisation.

The 20-day campaign, which was launched on April 7, aims to complete 9,559 sterilisations in Puning, which, with a population of 2.24 million, is the most populous county in the province.

A doctor in Daba village said that his team was working flat out, beginning sterilisations every day at 8am and working straight through until 4am the following day.
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Zhang Lizhao, 38, the father of two sons, aged 6 and 4, said that he rushed home late last night from buying loquats for his wholesale fruit business to undergo sterilisation after his elder brother was detained. His wife had already returned so that the brother would be freed.

Mr Zhang said: “This morning my wife called me and said they were forcing her to be sterilised today. She pleaded with the clinic to wait because she has her period. But they would not wait a single day. I called and begged them but they said no. So I have rushed back. I am satisfied because I have two sons.”

Thousands of others have refused to submit and officials are continuing to detain relatives, including elderly parents, to force them to submit to surgery. Those in detention are required to listen to lectures on the rules limiting the size of families.

If this is "smart" and "enlightened," I will take dumb and in the dark any day of the week.

What I found almost as disturbing as the article are the comments where people seem to think that forced sterilization, especially of the less worthy members of society, is not just morally acceptable, but a GOOD idea:

Good idea - we could do with some of that on a council estate near here....there are some families that have never worked, they have children who will never work and they breed like mice to enable the rest of us to keep them in the double council houses with free tax perks and the like -

Sounds like a good idea to me - 1st of all I would sterilise all of the people who want Gordon Brown to run another term as PM. If they cannot see that once the election is over he will be back to ignoring what the people who elected him want, taxing us to the hilt and wasting it on more social engineering, and breaking all manifesto pledges they are not intellegent enough, and under any other Darwinian society would not be fit to breed the next generation.

Whilst I cannot agree to the chinese approach on this issue, I must say that it should be applied to some in the UK.  Those living off the state should be limited so the rest of us do not have to pay for their irresponsibility.

People should not have as many children as they want. That is selfish. You may not want the state to interfere but I'll bet that you want the state to pay. There has been one large familiy in the news recently who should be sterilised.

Hello!? Do we need to be reminded that the eugenics movement of the United States in the early 20th century that resulted in forced sterilizations of many Americans also lead to the Holocaust of Nazi Germany?  Eugenics is back in vogue.  Be careful what you wish for people because you just might get it.

Hat Tip: Jivin J

A quick search over the Internet turns up other cases where fertility doctors were found to have impregnated women using their own sperm.  It has been confirmed that Dr. Fortier of Las Vegas used his own sperm to impregnate at least one woman without her knowledge.  He practiced medicine beginning in 1945 and some experts suspect that their could be dozens of other families that have no idea that Dr. Fortier was their "sperm donor."  Dr. Cecil B. Jacobson was convicted of 52 counts of fraud and perjury for inseminating unwitting patients with his own sperm and for telling them they were pregnant when they were not.  Prosecutors charged that he may have fathered as many as 75 children.  Dr. Jacobson practiced at George Washington University Medical Center.

Most people think that such shenanigans in the infertility arena are a relatively recent occurrence.  Not true.  In fact, the fertility industry began with them.  The first documented case of a woman becoming pregnant by artificial insemination was in 1884.  A Quaker woman and her merchant husband, not able to conceive, approached Dr. William Pancoast of Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. When Dr. Pancoast presented this couple's case to his medical students, one of the students suggested:

 … that semen should be collected from the "best looking" member of the class, and used to inseminate the woman. Dr. Pancoast agreed to the experiment. Without informing either the woman or her husband of his intentions, he called the merchants wife back under the pretense of doing another examination. The woman was anesthetized, and the procedure was carried out. It wasn't until it became evident that the woman had actually conceived that her husband was informed.

There are few important aspects of this case.  First, in the absence of the actual act of sex between a husband and wife, procreation by artificial insemination is reduced to a “shopping list” of desired traits.  Second, the fact the doctor and his medical students did not deem it necessary to inform the wife or husband is evidence of a mentality that continues to pervade the business of creating life through artificial means: try it first and ask whether it is ethical later.  Third, the woman was never told of what was done to her.  I think it is typical of an industry that regularly uses woman desperate for children as guinea pigs for whatever new procedure a doctor can think up.

Why doctors do this to unsuspecting women is beyond me, but clearly there is a medical precedent. My guess is that it is a combination of a desire to help the patient, a "because I can" attitude, mixed with a huge amount of arrogance.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

I had this reading in mind when I read this story about a couple that used IVF and foreign surrogacy to have a child:

She was all of five days old when she was first put on a plane, alone. She hopped continents, starting her journey at New York, and taking stops at Canada and Paris before taking off again for New Delhi, where she encountered her first run-in with the Indian Customs’ infamous hospitality. They detained her. It was barely a month after the 26/11 terror attacks, and she wasn’t allowed to leave the airport for five days for her final destination, Mumbai. When the officials finally let her go after receiving frantic calls, assurances and even emotional blackmail, they packed her in gently as precious baggage. ‘She’ was a five-day-old embryo created in 2007 and placed in a straw which was then sealed in a cryo-cylinder and couriered through Fedex.

The feisty little fighter came to life this January. Baby Daniela, as she was named by her ecstatic American parents, Ilona and Stan Slezinger, was born through a surrogate mother in Mumbai with help from IVF veterans Dr Hrishikesh Pai and Dr Nandita Palshetkar at Lilavati Hospital and Drs Sudhir Ajja and Yashodhara of SurrogacyIndia.

The Slezingers tried in vitro fertilisation (IVF) twice in NY between 2005 and 2007 but failed both times. “That’s when the doctor hinted at other options,’’ said Stan. “But surrogacy is very expensive in the US. It could have cost us between $80,000 and $1,40,000. Soon we were doing research online and came across the Bhandup-based SurrogacyIndia. We found surrogacy is performed in India, the laws are favourable and infrastructure is in place. I was so impressed with the professional attitude and efficiency when I first exchanged mails with Dr Ajja that I knew this was where we would ship our frozen embryo.’’

This story sounds all full of love and warmth but let me be frank.  I may not always know what Love is, but I certainly know what Love isn't.  Love is NOT freezing your offspring, shipping them by FedEX overseas, unaccompanied (to be held in customs,) then implanting them in a stranger's uterus, to be delivered by doctors you have never met, just to get a child on the cheap. 

I had the same thoughts about this story.  A couple bought (that's right BOUGHT) embryos over the Internet and had them implanted in a surrogate.  When the surrogate found out about the mother's criminal past, she took the babies back:

It was just a month after getting the twins, on September 3, that Amy was forced to give up the precious babies she'd waited so long for after Shelly Baker, the surrogate mother who'd carried them for her, decided she wanted them back....

The surrogate mother, Shelly, accused Amy and Scott, 40, of being deceitful and withholding information after finding out about a drug charge Amy had from many years previously and that she sees a psychiatrist for anxiety....

"Every time I miscarried, a part of us just died," Amy says. "For weeks I'd cry myself to sleep, then pull myself together and we would try again. The three times I got pregnant - it was just terrible. Night after night, I'd walk through the door and start sobbing."

But she and Scott were determined. They considered adoption but finally settled on a surrogate - someone who would carry their baby for them. The Kehoes bought fertilised eggs from donors on the internet and began looking for someone to give birth to their children.

"Scott and I wanted to children so badly that we were after a sure thing. We wanted proven eggs, proven sperm and a proven surrogate," Amy says. It was all done through a broker and was legal and legitimate.

I am very sorry for the heartache of this couple, but Love is NOT buying your children over the Internet and paying another woman to carry them.  Love is the option Amy and Scott didn't choose: ADOPTION.  

What puzzles me about this whole affair is that the children Amy and Scott had taken away from them were not genetically related and were carried by another woman.  An adopted child would also have been non-genetically related and carried by another woman.  So why did they choose the route they did?  My guess is that the answer is exactly what Amy said.  They wanted children so badly they really were willing to purchase embryos and pay a surrogate instead of waiting to adopt a child that needed them.

Love is not selfish or self-serving or envious.  Love is patient and hopes.

I have a love-hate relationship with carbohydrates as do many.  I love how they taste, I hate how they make me feel and how my butt grows exponentially after I eat them.  Ever since my college biochemistry course where I learned in detail about carbohydrate metabolism, I realized that many of our health problems come from eating too many simple carbohydrates.

According to a new book called The Fertility Diet, carbohydrate intake affects fertility in women.  Fertili-talk blog has the scoop:

According to the authors of The Fertility Diet, certain carbohydrates do have an adverse affect on fertility. These are the carbs that are easily digested, such as those found in white bread, potatoes, soft drinks and more.

Conversely, according to The Fertility Diet, carbs that are slow to digest and rich in fiber can actually improve fertility.

What do carbohydrates have to do with fertility—ovulation and pregnancy?

Carbohydrates, more than any other nutrient, determine a person’s blood sugar and insulin levels. If these levels go too high, the way they do in millions of people with insulin resistance, the balance of hormones that are needed for successful reproduction and normal ovulation are thrown out of kilter.

The findings of the Nurses’ Health Study showed that women who ate more fast digesting carbs had a higher glycemic load.

Participants with high glycemic loads were 92% more likely to experience ovulatory infertility!

Other recommendations from the authors of The Fertility Diet:

As described in The Fertility Diet, ten simple changes in diet and activity can have profound effects on fertility. You can increase your chances of getting pregnant with such simple strategies as:

•     Avoiding trans fats
•     Eating more beans, nuts, and other fertility-boosting plant protein
•     Embracing whole grains such as oatmeal and barley
•     Having a glass of whole milk or other full-fat dairy product every day (a small bowl of ice cream every now and then counts, too!)
•     Staying away from sugared sodas

Maxey’s story illustrates so many of the fertility industry’s dark and shady issues:

   1. Maxey, an educated medical student, admits to not giving much thought to his actions. So much for being a bright medical student. Just because you are smart, doesn’t make you wise.

  2. The sperm donation is referred to as “volunteering.” This isn’t the army, the local library or a soup kitchen. For his volunteerism and donating spirit, Maxey pocketed a steady stream of cash totaling some $29,000.

  3. Twice a week for 14 years, he “locked himself in a room with a cup and a sexy magazine” at the suggestion of his first wife, a nurse at the fertility clinic. They are no longer married. One has to wonder the impact of regular indulgences with “sexy magazines,” and the negative impact on a marriage.

   4. 400 children don’t know their father. And if they find him, what kind of relationship is Maxey expecting? What sort of parent relationship is he willing to develop with 400 children? That is a lot of college education, weddings and birthdays to provide for.

   5. Notice that only after the damage is done, has he experienced his great-awakening. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, IVF is one of the greatest social experiments of our time, with so many casually — scratch that . . . recklessly — pursuing reproductive technology as the solution to infertility. How many lives need to be ruined or destroyed for us to wake up? Maxey is just one of thousands of sperm and egg donors who’ve contributed to this colossal baby-making enterprise.

Nice to see natural fertility techniques getting the press they deserve.  From UK's MailOnline:

Proud parents: Lena and Dudley Bryce with their daughter Lola

Britain's first iPhone baby is born after couple tried four years to conceive

A woman who was considering IVF treatment has given birth to a baby girl after using an iPhone application to become pregnant.

After four years of struggling to conceive, Lena Bryce and partner Dudley had nearly given up hope of having children, until she heard about the fertility app and downloaded it to her iPhone.

The 30-year-old entered her body temperature daily and the app calculated when she would be most fertile.

After just two months of using the tecnology she fell pregnant.

Last Friday, a delighted Lena gave birth to 6lb 12ozs Lola at Glasgow Southern General Hospital on the exact date the app had predicted.

Lena said she had been considering IVF and adoption, but thought of other ideas when Dudley bought her an iPhone for her 30th birthday.

'I typed in "get pregnant" and downloaded five apps,' the delighted mother said.

'The Free Menstrual Calendar was easiest to use so I stuck with it and in tow [sic] months I was pregnant.

January's issue of Popular Mechanics has an article titled How to Create a Designer Baby.  In it is this headline and information:

Three Ways Babies are Born to Specifications

Savior Siblings: Parents with children who suffer from leukemia or anemia and who could benefit from stem cell treatment can order up a sibling with the right genetic material. DNA from an embryo is analyzed to find a human leukocyte antigen gene match between an embryo and the child. Nine months later, when the baby is born, the stem cells are retrieved from umbilical cord blood.


Pink or Blue: A 2006 survey conducted by the Genetics and Public Policy Center found almost half of U.S. fertility clinics offered non-­disease-related sex selection through PGD embryo screening. A new technique in clinical trials may offer a less expensive method. Originally developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for use in cattle, the new method analyzes sperm instead of embryos and uses color and fluorescence to sort male chromosomes from larger female ones.


Disease-Free Guarantee: Parents with a family history of diseases such as cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia and muscular dystrophy have a significant chance of passing the gene mutation that causes the disease on to their children. PGD can screen embryos for those conditions. It can also screen for genes that don’t guarantee illness, but which are associated with higher risks of breast and colon cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.

I applaud Popular Mechanics' word choice.  While other media try to soften these practices by using euphemisms, Popular Mechanics used exactly the right word: specifications.  Specifications are what you have when you make a big purchase like a car or computer.  They are not something we should have when making babies.

Hat Tip: Biopolitical Times

New screening process 'doubles' conception rate

BRITISH scientists claim they have made an IVF breakthrough that could vastly improve the chances of conception for thousands of women wanting children.

A study of 115 U.S. women, whose embryos were sent to Oxford in the UK for analysis, showed an embryo screening technique called comparative genomic hybridisation doubled the rate of conception.

Comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) takes a single cell from very young embryo to test for genetic abnormalities.  It is a form of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis where embryos that make the genetic cut are implanted and those that do not are thrown in the trash or donated to research.

Here is the problem.  How can you test an embryo unless it has ALREADY been conceived?  If all of the embryos tested with CGH have already been conceived then how can CGH "double conception rates" as the article claims?

I'll tell you how.  By changing the definition of conception to mean implantation. See, it is so much easier to toss out something you think hasn't been "conceived" yet.  When people think pre-conception they think egg and sperm which is accurate.  But by saying the embryos that are being tested haven't been conceived yet, these embryos suddenly carry the moral weight of egg and sperm. Which means practically none.  Egg, sperm, pre-conceived embryo?  All just biological waste that can be tossed out if defective.

The problem is that embryos have been conceived.  They are fundamentally different from egg and sperm.  They are full members of the species Homo sapiens and organisms in their own right.  No amount of linguistic gymnastics can change that.

By the way, read this part again:

A study of 115 U.S. women, whose embryos were sent to Oxford in the UK for analysis, showed an embryo screening technique called comparative genomic hybridisation doubled the rate of conception.

Who exactly sends their offspring on ice by mail or courier to the UK to have them tested for genetic abnormalities anyway?

From the UK Times Online:

In an attack on the “fertility tourism” industry, Naomi Pfeffer warned that increasing numbers of “vulnerable women in developed countries” were being exploited by Westerners who were desperate to conceive.

Professor Pfeffer, who researches controversial developments in medicine, told the Motherhood in the 21st Century Conference at University College London: “The exchange relationship is analogous to that of a client and a prostitute. It’s a unique situation because it’s the only instance in which a woman exploits another woman’s body.”

You tell them Naomi!  Oh and she is not done:

 “Most of these women are in developing economies where access to healthcare is limited by their ability to pay. They are often vulnerable women and it’s a very unequal economic relationship.

“These women are being encouraged to take real risks with their health through ovarian stimulation and egg retrieval. It commodifies women’s bodies and treats their reproductive capacities as a service.”

Eggsactly!  Could not have said it better.

Hat Tip: Jennifer Lahl

The Catholic Church has always rejected surrogacy.  Many countries like France, Germany and China and have done the same making it illegal.  Canada and the UK have banned commercial surrogacy, or surrogacy for money.  Everyone has heard stories of how surrogacy can turn ugly with the child caught in the middle.  But there are other victims.  Surrogacy is becoming more popular.  As rich westerners go to poorer nations like India to pay women to carry their IVF babies for cheap, these poor women are being exploited for their uterus.  It is the outsourcing of pregnancy and birth.

The new documentary Google Baby films the creation of babies across three continents.  The review asks:

...who is the parent of a child when the sperm comes from Israel, the egg comes from the United States and the surrogate pregnancy takes place in Gujarat, India?

Eggs are donated by young American women looking for quick cash and embryos are created by IVF in American clinics, sometimes with sperm from men from other countries.  Then they are frozen and shipped to India where Dr. Nayna Patel has a surrogacy business.  Her surrogates are implanted with the western embryos at bargain prices.  The surrogates carry the fetuses and are then given an automatic C-section.  The baby is taken to its "parents" and the surrogate is left to cry on the operating table.  These poor women can earn upwards of 15 years worth of salary for a single surrogacy. 

From the UK DailyMail:

The tiny Akanksha clinic in the Indian city of Anand is a world away from the slick, state-of-the-art fertility units found in Britain.

A dilapidated two-storey building, it stands in the midst of the chaotic bustle of life in the small, overcrowded city.

Outside its gate, beggars clamour for attention, auto-rickshaws and camel-drawn carts form an aggressive scrum and a thick layer of dust covers everything.

Yet British couples desperate for children are travelling to this unlikely location to pay Indian women to give birth to their babies...

The Akanksha clinic, run by infertility expert Dr Nayna Patel, is pioneering the outsourcing of pregnancy.

And it is at the forefront of a booming trade in so-called reproductive tourism in India, where there is a more relaxed attitude to paying women for pregnancy, a practice banned in many other countries.

By some estimates, Indian surrogacy is already a £250 million-a-year business, and it's growing rapidly.

Virtually every day, Dr Patel says, middle-class Western couples arrive at the clinic, hoping that an impoverished local woman will carry their child.

She has more than 50 foreign couples from Britain, America, Europe, the Middle East and even Africa and 45 surrogate mothers on her books.

Watch the heart wrenching video from "Google Baby" of an Indian surrogate fulfilling her contractual duty and watching the life she carried in her womb being taken to his purchasing parents.  My heart breaks for the surrogate and the baby who is crying for his "mother."

This is one more phenomenon that cheapens procreation and turns it into a business. This really does remind me of "The Island" where clone surrogates give birth and then are "dispatched" and Huxely's Brave New World where babies are mass produced in hatcheries.

Hat Tip: Biopolitical Times

It is interesting how one unethical behavior begets another.  I noticed it when some friends of mine who were infertile began to think about adoption.  Turns out the waiting list for adopting an infant is miles long.  I am positive this is due to abortion on demand.  48 million Americans have been aborted since Roe vs. Wade and now there are precious few babies available for adoption.  As a result, IVF is becoming a more popular choice for infertile couples who may have gone the adoption route if there were babies in their area available to adopt.  IVF, in turn, has begotten embryonic stem cell research and will in the future beget reproductive cloning which will usher in genetic engineering.

This cautionary tale illustrates how reckless sexual behavior leads down the same path:

‘I had a one-night stand, now I’m infertile’  Research shows the lifestyle you lead when you’re young could leave you with fertility problems

The test results were conclusive. It was the news that Lizzie Steele had been dreading - she was infertile. And she was just 18 years old.

Tests to find out the cause of her extreme stomach pains revealed Lizzie had less than a one per cent chance of ever conceiving. Her specialist said this could be traced back to a bout of chlamydia which had resulted in pelvic inflammatory disease.

"I was horrified," says Lizzie, a psychology student. "I was being told my chances of motherhood were practically nonexistent - and I was still in my teens."

But far from being a rare occurrence, increasing numbers of young women are suffering infertility problems. Although the average age of women seeking fertility treatment is 36, research shows that in some cases this is being caused by the lifestyle led in their teens and 20s.

Lizzie could have been paying the price for having a one-night stand on holiday two years before. "I'd had sex with a guy I met in Ibiza, but the condom split," she says. "When I got back to Britain, five days later, I got checked out at the sexual health clinic straight away. I was told I had chlamydia and given a course of antibiotics."

She later contracted chlamydia a second time, from another relationship. Again she was treated with antibiotics, and like one in every 10 women who contracts pelvic inflammatory disease, Lizzie has been left with fertility problems. The STD had spread and caused irreversible damage to her reproductive system. As a result it's highly likely she'll need fertility treatment to achieve her dream of motherhood.

Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) has helped many couples conceive healthy children and is generally considered a safe practice. However, a new long-term analysis of PGD in mice suggests that this procedure may increase risks of weight gain and memory decline in adulthood....

They found that there were no differences in embryo development prior to uterine implantation in the biopsied and control groups, which is consistent with results found in humans....  Following birth, the authors tracked many physical and behavioral properties; the two groups of mice were similar in many respects, though mice in the biopsied group on average had higher body weight and poorer memory in maze tests. To get a more detailed picture of these memory defects, the authors performed a proteomic analysis of adult mouse brains; 36 proteins displayed significant differences between biopsied and control groups, 17 of which are closely associated with neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimers and Down Syndrome.

So PGD shows a risk of neurodegenerative disorders in mice.  This is important, but it is this paragraph that I want to dissect:

PGD is used alongside assisted reproduction technologies to ensure couples that may be carriers of genetic disease (e.g. Ashkenazi Jews who have a high incidence of Tay-Sachs among their population) don't pass on defective genes to their children. While PGD is not believed to pose any serious health risks, the procedure does involve manipulating the developing embryo and no rigorous long-term studies have been carried out.

First this makes it sound like PGD eliminates the diseased genes so that parents "don't pass on defective genes to their children."  PGD does nothing of the sort.  PGD just tests the resulting embryos for genetic disease.  The parents still pass on their defective genes, the embryos that get them end up in the trash.

Second, and most infuriating is, why weren't these animal studies done BEFORE preimplantation genetic diagnosis was used in humans?  Why after years of using PGD are scientists now asking the questions of how this technique affects organisms long term?  I have said it repeatedly that IVF and PGD are human experimentation.  I am outraged that the fertility industry is allowed to conduct these kinds of techniques on humans without having thoroughly studied them in animals first. Our government regulates the injection of ones own stem cells, but turns a blind eye to the effects of the biopsy of a human embryo.

Some might argue that PGD is only used to prevent the birth of children with devastating disease so the risk is outweighed by the reward.  But, PGD is not just used for this purpose.  It is also used to select embryos to be an donor for a sick older sibling and for sex selection.  These children are put at long term risk for the questionable motives of their parents.

This is another consequence of ignoring the fact that human life begins at conception. Another consequence of asserting that we have some kind of "reproductive rights" that includes having children anyway we see fit without thought to the well-being of those very children.

But karyomapping could in theory be used to test for any one of the 15,000 genetic defects known about.

Using the same test doctors could also look at whether any chromosomes are missing or duplicated which suggests the embryo will not be viable.

It would also be far quicker than current tests, taking only three days instead of weeks or months.

Professor Alan Handyside, from London's Bridge Centre, who developed the test said in the handful of families they had looked at, it had been 100% successful in picking up affected embryos.

At the same time they found serious chromosome abnormalities suggesting those embryos would not have resulted in successful pregnancy, delegates at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference heard.

The embryos that are found to have chromosomal abnormalities are discarded, donated to research, or put in the deep freeze. (Gattaca anyone?)

As I have said before there has been a lot of talk about this technique had how great it will be.  But there has not been so much coverage of the findings of Belgian scientists that state that 90% of IVF are found to be abnormal with these kinds of tests and therefore they do not predict which embryos are viable and which are not.  From Science Daily:

For the first time, scientists have shown that chromosomal abnormalities are present in more than 90% of IVF embryos, even those produced by young, fertile couples. Ms Evelyne Vanneste, a PhD student in the Centre for Human Genetics and the University Fertility Center, Leuven University, Belgium, told the 25th annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology today (Wednesday July 1), that the surprising finding meant that current techniques used in preimplantation genetic screening (PGS), where embryos are screened genetically in order to select the best embryo for transfer, do nothing to improve pregnancy and live birth rates. Indeed, it can lead to potentially viable embryos being discarded, she said.

So karomapping and preimplantation genetic screening (PGS) lead to viable human embryos being thrown in the trash.  Why?:

Although PGS is promoted as a way of increasing the chances of a successful pregnancy," said Ms Vanneste, "there has never been any significant evidence that it does, in fact, increase live birth rates after IVF. Our findings have shown that almost every cell of a human embryo carries a different genetic composition; consequently, the one cell that is analysed genetically is not representative of the rest of the embryo. If the tested cell is genetically abnormal, the embryo will not be transferred. But the rest of the embryo might be normal and develop into a healthy person. Therefore, the use of PGS means that potentially viable embryos will be discarded. The prevalent chromosomal instability in all early human IVF embryos explains the failure of PGS to improve the live birth rate per embryo transferred.

Karomapping, PGD, eugenic abortion all suffer from the same moral fallacy.  If the genes are defective, then the whole organism is defective and gets thrown in the biohazard waste.  They literally throw the baby out with the dirty genetic bathwater.  This study suggests that with the advent of karomapping, perfectly healthy embryos will be tossed out too.  Just one more reason the Catholic Church finds IVF embryo screening unethical.

I found this scholarly article from the journal of Fertility and Sterility (via Biopolitical Times) on the ethics of sex selection.  Sex selection is essentially the practice of either aborting a fetus who is the wrong sex or using IVF and preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) to screen embryos, implanting the ones that are the desired sex.  Sex selection happens for many reasons from a desire to have a "balanced" family to cultural preferences for sons.  The Catholic Church is clear that sex selection, no matter how it is achieved or for what reason, is unethical.

I do not have access to the article because I do not subscribe, but the abstract is certainly telling.  Researchers asked both primary care physicians (PCPs) and physicians who provide sex selection services (SSTPs) about the ethics of sex selection.   Here is what they found.  First the sex selection providers:

Sex-selection technology providers argued that sex selection was an expression of reproductive rights, was initiated and pursued by women, and was a sign of female empowerment that allowed couples to make well-informed family planning decisions, prevented unwanted pregnancies and abortions, and minimized the abuse of wives and/or neglect of children.

No surprise that those who get paid to provide sex selection services think it is all good.  But it is the perspective of the family physician that is most illuminating:

In contrast, PCPs challenged the concept of “family balancing” and questioned whether women could truly express free choice under family and community pressure. In addition, PCPs voiced the concerns that sex selection technologies led to invasive medical interventions in the absence of therapeutic indications, contributed to gender stereotypes that could result in neglect of children of the lesser-desired sex, and were not a solution to domestic violence.

So the doctors that actually take care of families do not think sex selection is such a great idea.  They clearly question the perspectives of their sex selection colleagues.  This is probably because they are in the trenches and actually provide care to a family long after the sex selection provider does their job.  According to BioPolitical Times one primary care physician said, "To say that you want a child based on whether they are male or female is almost degrading."  (I would go so far and say it IS degrading.)

I find this analogous to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology in England who proposed euthanizing sick infants while pediatricians who actually care ofor those sick infants called it "social engineering." 

Do I find it surprising that assisted reproduction docs who provide sex selection services say that sex selection is great?  Not  when they have made up the term "pre-embryo" to describe a preimplantation embryo to placate the moral concerns of their clients.  Some fertility docs even go so far as to say that an embryo has not been conceived yet so it is okay to toss them out if they do not pass the gender test.

What is my point here?  We should question the "ethical" perspectives of physicians offering sex selection services to couples because sex selection is making them money. Of course they will say what they do is "empowering" and an "expression of reproductive rights."  We should trust the ethical prespectives of the doctors who actually take care of children and families.  Primary are physicians are spot on when they question the ethics of sex selection.

Left-over embryo frozen in a "concentration can." "Concentration can" is a term coined by geneticist Jerome LeJeune, who discovered the genetic cause of Down Syndrome

I found this gem of an article from the Village Voice on embryo adoption.  (Yes, that is sarcasm you read.)  Apparently, the term "embryo adoption" has some pro-choicers very worried. They are concerned about the use of the word "adoption" for the practice of couples "adopting" other parent's embryonic offspring:

Reproductive rights activists and supporters of embryonic stem cell research are watching with growing alarm. "I think it is dangerous," says Sean Tipton, spokesman for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. "It's the language of embryo adoption that helps people start equating in their minds an embryo with a child. And if you establish that legally, it becomes very important."

By important, of course, he means bad—bad for in vitro fertilization, bad for the future of embryonic stem cell research, and bad for reproductive liberty.

(Again with those that mythical "reproductive rights" that are nowhere in the US Constitution but still trump everything including religious freedom.)  Some pro-choicers even go on to say that the embryo adoption phenomenon is just a stealth anti-choice movement:

Bonnie Steinbock teaches philosophy and bioethics at SUNY Albany and has written widely on frozen embryos, abortion, and stem cell research....  She's also a member of the Ethics Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. She views the embryo adoption campaign as an anti-abortion, anti–stem cell crusade.

"It's a backdoor way of making embryos seem like people," she says.

Here in lies the twisted hypocrisy so typical of those who defend abortion at all costs.  Some couples want to use their "reproductive rights" by "adopting" other couples unwanted embryos. But this might just wake up the public to the fact that embryos and fetuses are actually living human organisms which is a threat to abortion-on-demand and research on embryos.  Therefore, it is okay to disparage couples who choose "adopt" embryos and the people who facilitate the adoption as "anti-abortion" and "anti-stem cell" even though they are just exercising their "reproductive rights." 

So tossing your "left-over" embryos or donating them to research is good because it fits with the whole pro-abortion mentality.  But putting your embryos up for adoption and allowing them to finish their lives is bad because it challenges the morality of abortion-on-demand and embryo-destructive research.  No wonder "embryo adoption" has pro-choicers worried.

It is the embryo adoption advocate Sam Casey that points out the obvious.  There is a reason there are so many "left-over" embryos in the deep freeze: couples instinctively know their embryos are not just some worthless ball of cells:

[Casey] cites studies like the one published last December by Duke University, which found that patients are largely dissatisfied with their options of disposing of their embryos. Not wanting to donate them to another couple, but also uncertain about the moral implications of discarding or donating them to research, many patients are now delaying their decision by paying storage fees of as much as $750 a year. Others have simply walked away, leaving their doctors in the awkward position of having to decide what to do with them.

"People typically delay the decision, deny the decision, or run from the decision," says Casey. "But why is it such a tough decision if it's just property? It's because they really know what it is—particularly the ones who have been through in vitro fertilization and have already had children."

This is one of the many reason why the Catholic Church opposes IVF.  Because once you create life outside the womb, a whole new set of moral dilemmas arise. Couples so desperate to have a genetically related child do not consider the consequences and then are faced with issues of life and death for their "left-over" offspring.

From the London Evening Standard:

Lesbian Kelly Guarina paid £505 for IVF treatment, which usually costs £4,500, after sharing her eggs

Fertility clinics are to target lesbians as egg donors after research found they were more likely than heterosexual women to give birth after IVF....

Researchers believe the difference between lesbian and straight women arises because most gay women seek treatment for lifestyle reasons, and not because they have fertility problems.

Conversely, most straight women seek IVF because they have problems conceiving.

Dr Kamal Ahuja, its scientific director, said: "These results are remarkable. This is the first indication that the quality of eggs for lesbian women is better.

"It's also a remarkable turnaround - 10 years ago lesbian women weren't all that welcome in fertility clinics. Now that's changed. These women are going to be our saviours. This is evidence that they make excellent patients in egg-sharing schemes - both as donors and recipients."

Lesbians will be encouraged to take part in the "egg-sharing" system pioneered by the clinic.

In return for subsidised IVF, they will donate some of their eggs to an anonymous recipient. This enables both women to become pregnant, and provides an alternative to using an "altruistic" donor who does not want children of her own.

There is currently a shortage of suitable egg donors at British clinics.

As a result, an increasing number of couples are going abroad for treatment. In countries such as Spain, India and the US women can be paid for donating eggs, but this is banned in Britain.

Dr Ahuja said: "There's a huge unmet demand for donor eggs in the UK. Egg-sharing is one potential solution. This puts an end to women needing to go to countries like India...."

Kelly Guarina is pregnant for the first time after using a sperm donor.

The cleaning contractor, 30, underwent IVF at the London Women's Clinic, where she also donated eggs to two women.

Her treatment should have cost £4,500 but she paid £505 in return for sharing eggs with other patients....

Her only concern was that any children born from donated eggs are entitled to track her down when they turn 18.

The baby she is carrying will also be entitled to find the sperm donor.

Surely ethics dictate that the parents and fertility doctors have the best interest of the resulting children of assisted reproduction in mind.  If a parent's wants infringe on the best interests of the resulting child, surely the interests of the child would win out?  Don't bet on it.  Wesley J. Smith blogs about a new article in the Journal of Medical Ethics that argues that future child welfare doesn't matter because they do not exist yet.  The abstract states:

The welfare of the child is the prevailing principle and concern regarding access to assisted reproduction in Western countries today, and there is a wish to avoid harm to future children. New research fields have developed in order to provide scientific evidence on the welfare of children living with different "types" of parents. Assisted reproductive technologies (ART) seems to be heading in a responsible direction where the care and concern for future children is vital. However, the claim of this article is that the principle of the welfare of the child confuses the ethical framing of ART. Several philosophers in the past have argued that potential people must be regarded as outside the moral domain, and therefore cannot be harmed or benefitted. This message has not reached the policymakers, probably because the welfare of the child principle seems to fit so elegantly with common sense. In this article a different ethical framing of ART is proposed. The author argues that "futile care" and not "the welfare of the child" should be the guiding principle for eventually rejecting access to ART. The desired goal of ART treatment should be understood to be the production of functional families.

So what matters is not the "common sense" of what is best for the child, but instead creating "functional families".  Smith comments on the absurdity:

This is ridiculous. We could certainly talk all we want about a child who does not exist, using him or her for body parts for example, and no harm has actually been done to anybody. But once that child actually comes into being, by definition he or she is no longer an abstract theoretical construct, but a real human organism. Once we have become actual parents, the point should cease to be primarily about us, and should be focused on the welfare and well being of our son or daughter.

What I find most chilling is the last sentence of the abstract:

Assisted reproduction is primarily about us, actual people in an actual society, and how potential children may affect us.

Because EVERYTHING is about US, including our children!?  Here is academic evidence that assisted reproduction is really about what parents want and what doctors can do, rather than on the children.

The Church warned us about this.  This is the difference between "begotten" and "made."  Children are supposed to be "begotten" in a womb, not "made" in a petri dish.  Smith gets it:

According to this view genetic engineering is terrific. After all, if I want a kid who can play baseball well, why should I be stuck with a son who is bookish and unathletic? Also, savior siblings–those whose tissues may be of medical benefit to an existing ill child–are fine and dandy....  According to this view, children can be made explicitly for instrumental uses, and hence, no problem....

This is parenthood as hedonism.... Everything is about me! So much for unconditional love.

Here is the audio.  The beginning got cut off but I think it still makes sense:

Since My Sister's Keeper has become a movie I have decided to revisit my post on the book.  It is important that we remember that children are conceived everyday not for themselves but to be spare parts factories for an older sibling.  It is a practice that gets little attention, and even less oversight.  Here is the trailer (with the song More from my absolutely favorite artist Tyrone Wells in it) and my thoughts on My Sister's Keeper:

During my family's recent bout of the flu, I finished the third book in the Women's Bioethics Project Book Club, My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult. I have discussed the other books here and here.

The fictional story is about a young girl named Anna who was conceived with IVF and screened by pre-implantation genetic diagnosis to be a donor for her older sister Kate who has leukemia. After thirteen years of blood and bone marrow donations to her sister, Anna finally says no to a kidney transplant and hires a lawyer.

The book is written in many different perspectives including that of Anna, her mother and father, and Anna's lawyer. It presents all of the tough choices surrounding this issue: whether or not parents in this situation can have both of their children's best interest at heart.

This book maybe fiction, but Anna's story is going on right now in fertility clinics in the real world. Parents desperate to save their dying child conceive a "savior sibling" or as some people call them "spare parts babies." There is no doubt that the Catholic Church does not condone this practice. It is not only against the dignity of the child to be conceived in a dish, but also to treat that child as a biological commodity. And as in My Sister's Keeper, it is not always a one time donation.

Awhile back England's Human Genetics Comission finally realized that there should be some oversight of this practice. From the BBC:

Children created as so-called "saviour siblings" to aid a sick brother or sister must be monitored to ensure their wellbeing, experts suggest.

The recommendation is made in a report on reproductive technologies by the Human Genetics Commission.

It warns that once a child has been created to save a sibling, there could be a temptation to view them as a spare parts bank.

The report says: "Taking blood from the umbilical cord after birth causes no ill effects, but the removal of bone marrow is more controversial as it causes discomfort, although the long-term risk of harm is slight.

"However, once it is accepted in principle that children can be created to save the lives of siblings, perhaps more extensive - ie the donation of a kidney - or repeated tissue donations may be seen as equally permissible."

As I have written before, of course they are. If the reason that child was brought into the world was to be a "walking tissue donation" why wouldn't the parents expect that the child would make repeated donations?

I find this practice particularly frustrating because I wonder where the Human Genetics Comission was before this all started. Why wasn't this thought of before? In My Sister's Keeper, the ethics committee was never convened on Anna's behalf, only for Kate. I agree with Josephine Quintavalle:

But Josephine Quintavalle, of the group Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said the potential impact of new technologies - such as those for saviour siblings - should have been thought of before.

"These issues are absolutely what we have been worried about. And they should be thought about before children are used as guinea pigs in a social experiment. [my emphasis]

Or course there are the needs of the dying child and her parents' perspective which are compelling. But, no surprise the perspective I find most compelling is Anna's; the saviour sibling whose best interest it seems is always overlooked. Here are a few of Anna's thoughts:

It made me wonder, though, what would have happened if Kate had been healthy. Chances are, I'd still be floating up in heaven or whatever, waiting to be attached to a body to spend some time on Earth. Certainly I would not be part of this family. See, unlike the rest of the free world, I didn't get here my accident. And if your parents have you for a reason then that reason better exist. Because once it's gone , so are you....

Lately, I have been having nightmares, where I'm cut into so many pieces that there isn't enough of me to put back together....

Did my parents do this when I came along? Did my father send out smoke signals; did he count my fingers and toes, sure he'd come up with the finest number in the universe? Did my mother kiss the top of my head and refuse to let the nurse take me away to be cleaned up? Or did they simply hand me away, since the real prize had been clamped between my belly and the placenta?

I really enjoyed My Sister's Keeper. I thought Picoult did a great job presenting all of the players involved. She forces us to ask whether creating a saviour sibling has really "saved" anyone.

I would like to thank the Women's Bioethics Project for starting this book club. I think their book choices were excellent and hopefully they have achieved their objective: to start a discussion about these very pressing issues.

Then of course there's the elephant in the room: pre-natal face prediction. I've previously described a likely future where couples undergoing IVF select which embryos to implant based on a table of risk factors and probabilistic trait predictions for each embryo, derived from large-scale genetic testing. Imagine if those parents could also see a visualisation of the probable facial structure of each of their potential children at the same time (or, more likely a "cloud" of potential faces indicating the uncertainty of the prediction).

Would this be a popular option, or would it simply be too uncomfortable for parents-to-be to stare into the potential eyes of each ultimately discarded embryo?

In case you haven't heard about Nadya, she is a single southern California woman with six children at home who just underwent in vitro fertilization and gave birth to octuplets.  So, now she is a single mother of 14 children.

So what is wrong with this situation?  We all know in our gut that something isn't right here.  Is it all Nadya?  Well, in her favor she did not selectively kill any of the eight babies growing inside her.  She had made that bed and was going to lie in it.  Her mother said she was "obsessed with children" and having had the unfortunate experience of suffering from clinical anxiety and depression myself, I smell mental illness.  When someone is obsessed with anything, it may seem like they want the best for the object of their obsession, but really they just want the object, regardless of the consequences.  Clearly, Nadya let her obsession get the best of her, but she didn't get pregnant with octuplets on her own.

Enter the fertility industry. So what part of this situation falls on their shoulders?  Doctors should know better than to implant that many embryos into a single woman who already has 6 children.  But then again, they should know not to make human embryos in a dish to being with.  This case has brought to light how unregulated the fertility industry is.  Which reminds me of this great verbal gem:

"A woman gets more regulatory oversight when she gets a tattoo than when she gets IVF."  --Brooks Keel, M.D., University of Kansas School of Medicine

And why is the fertility industry so unregulated?  Good old political correctness.  Far be it from anyone to tell Nadya that creating multiple offspring in a dish and implanting them all is not such a good idea.  Listen to the doctors from this article:

But Dr. Jeffrey Steinberg, who has fertility clinics in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and New York, countered: "Who am I to say that six is the limit? There are people who like to have big families."

"I am not a policeman for reproduction in the United States. My role is to educate patients," said Dr. James Grifo, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the New York University School of Medicine.

In the context of this case, these quotes seem callous.  But apply them to regular reproduction, (you know the old-fashioned way), and they are right.  I do not want to have some doctor telling me that my husband and I can only have a certain number of children.  It seems so me more and more it is the "artificialness" of the reproduction that is the real problem here.

I have said repeatedly that Roe Vs. Wade created these very slippery rights called "reproductive rights" that started with not having a baby if you didn't want one, even if that meant riping a living fetus from your womb and has mushroomed into having as many babies as you want, anyway you want 'em.  Even if you do not have anyone to make them with.  In either case, "reproductive rights" has allowed the wants of the parents to trump any rights or needs of the resulting children. 

Some people make a compelling case that "reproductive rights" should just mean abortion.  Via BiopoliticalTimes I found this quote from Amy Tuter, The Skeptical OB:

"The "choice" is the decision to have an abortion, and it does not extend to any possible choice in reproductive ethics. That's why Nadya Suleman had a right to get pregnant, a right to terminate the pregnancy and a right to carry it to term. She had no right to deliberately conceive octuplets, however, and it is a misunderstanding of reproductive rights to claim that she did....

In the rush to protect abortion rights, people should not ignore the rest of medical ethics. The right to end a pregnancy does not confer the right to begin one using artificial means. The right to selectively reduce a multiple pregnancy does not confer the right to create a multiple pregnancy of any number of embryos. In fact, the right to control one's body does not confer the right to demand medical treatment of any kind if it is not medically indicated.

The "right to choose" is the right to choose to terminate a pregnancy; it does not confer a right to choose anything, even if it is a reproductive choice."

Unfortunately, Dr. Tuter, I think it is too late.  When the Supreme Court pulled these "reproductive rights" out of thin air, all of this was bound to happen.  We assume that the Founding Fathers did not speak directly to the issues of "reproductive rights" because women's issues were a non-issue to them.  I think maybe, just maybe, the Founding Fathers did not put "reproductive rights" into the Constitution with the likes of the right to free speech and right to religious freedom because they knew it was folly. 

They were smart enough to see that "reproductive rights" are not something given to us all by our Creator. Some people can't have children and want them and some people who do not want children, are fertile anyway.  Having "reproductive rights" assumes we can right these "wrongs" by any means necessary.  We all know deep down that there is something very wrong with a society that allows innocent lives to be ripped from their mother's wombs for any reason on one hand, and then allows endless numbers of innocent lives to be created (by anyone's request) in a laboratory to uncertain ends on the other.

The real problem with the Nadya Suleman situation is the illusion that we all have "reproductive rights." Unfortunately, the folly of "reproductive rights" will continue. These rights have already begun to trump other rights specifically guaranteed in the Constitution like the right to religious freedom.  They will continue to be used to justify eugenics, human reproductive cloning and human genetic engineering.  The tragedy is that in the name of "reproductive rights", we continue to allow the wants of the parent or parents to outweigh any rights or needs of the resulting children and those that care for them.  Ironically, it will be our children, and their children, and their children that will suffer from our "reproductive rights."

I believe that assisted reproductive technologies (ART) like artificial insemination, IVF, ISCI, PGD (and even reproductive cloning and germ-line modification when they become a reality) are human experimentation.  Human experimentation on those who cannot consent to be experimented on.  A clear violation of the Nuremberg code.

Often, it is the children of ART that are ignored.  Of course, they are very wanted, but the child's best interest is often trumped by the desperate wants of the parent or parents.  That is why I believe that blogs like Confessions of a Cryokid are so important.  Listen to this child of ART and see what she has to say about religion and the fertility industry:

I find it very insulting that society feels that the only people who are anti-ART are also anti-abortion and anti-gay, and that we must be using God as a reason, because otherwise we'd be hypocritical.  Lets set one thing straight here...I am, and never have been, homophobic or religious.  My views on abortion have changed over the years, but I consider myself to be pro-choice (even if it's a choice I personally would not make).  I consider myself fiscally and socially liberal, but am a registered Independent.  Whew!  Now that all those questions are cleared up for everyone, let me explain my rationale of being opposed to donor conception.

Donor conception is an illusion.  It is an illusive medical treatment for infertility, but it is not and never will be a CURE.  It's also not a cure for women who can't find Mr. Right, or for lesbians who would rather have a child with their partner but cannot.  Therefore, the infertility industry has society under a spell.  They propagate the illusion that donor conception/ART is all of these things and more.  They tell everyone that "love makes a family" and "love is all you need", and that everyone is happy after treatment.  It's a LIE....

One of the main problems with our situation is that politically, it's not a liberal OR a conservative issue.  People need to stop looking at the issues of donor conception from their prospective political angle and start looking at it from the offspring's angle.  The conservatives don't want to look at it from our side because they don't even want to acknowledge that it happens and simply continue the era of secrecy, non-disclosure, and deception.  The liberals don't want to see our side because they see it as being anti-gay rights and anti-reproductive rights.  No one wants to take responsibility for the children created from the $3 billion dollar a year (in the US alone) infertility industry because that sounds "un-American", and that the laissez-faire policy currently in tact is acceptable behavior.

It's not.  It has never been acceptable behavior, but the infertility industry advocates secrecy and they subsist secrecy in their entire operation.  They don't advertise that all the statistics out there are ones they created.  They don't say that the so-called regulations on sperm banks and clinics were developed by them!  The US government has little to no say (except that the sperm must be tested for things like HIV) in how many offspring a donor can create, what information can be given, and how long the records must be kept.  There are no checks and balances whatsoever.  So obviously they are going to deny that there are offspring out there who are unhappy when a patient asks. 

The Catholic Church opposes ART not because it wants infertile couples or single women to suffer.  It does so because every human being has the right to be conceived out of love for love in a WOMB not a LAB.  Every human being has a right to enter the world without being a produced in a dish to a certain specification.