Reproductive Technologies

A woman who was the first to have a successful womb transplant from a dead donor has had her pregnancy terminated after the embryo showed no heartbeat, doctors in Turkey have said.

Derya Sert, 22, who was born without a womb, had been receiving in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment after the transplant in August 2011.

Her pregnancy was announced in April.

But in a statement released today by Akdeniz University Hospital in Turkey's Mediterranean city of Antalya, it read: 'Derya Sert's pregnancy was terminated after her end of eight weeks examination showed no embryo heartbeat.

'The general health status of the patient is fine.

'IVF will be continued when she is ready, in appropriate conditions.'

I mourn the loss of this little one. Eternal rest grant unto him or her, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him or her. May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

The Turkish woman who, two years ago, became the first person in the world to have a successful womb transplant from a deceased donor is pregnant, various media outlets are reporting.

Twenty-two-year-old Derya Sert, who was born without a womb, had been receiving in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments since the successful transplant, which took place in August 2011 at Akdeniz University Hospital in Turkey’s southern province of Antalya, the AFP news agency reported on Friday.

According to Reuters, the hospital released a statement stating early test results were “consistent with pregnancy” and that Sert was “in good health.”

“Experts however warn the pregnancy carries several health risks to the patient as well as to the baby, including birth defects due to the use of immunosuppressive drugs as well as preterm delivery.”

However, there are a number of reasons to believe that concerns about safety and risk are unlikely to prove an insurmountable barrier to the ethical creation of designer babies by in vitro eugenics. To begin with, as I noted above, these concerns arise regarding every new reproductive technology involving the manipulation of embryos. Until a generation of children produced by IVF (or intracytoplasmic sperm injection or cytoplasmic transfer) have lived out their natural lifespan, we will not know whether IVF (or any of these other technologies) is safe—and we certainly did not know this at the time at which those technologies were first trialled. Thus, in vitro eugenics would not raise any issues we have not confronted before.

The child is not an object to which one has a right, nor can he be considered as an object of ownership: rather, a child is a gift, “the supreme gift” and the most gratuitous gift of marriage, and is a living testimony of the mutual giving of his parents.

"The desire for a child, sincere and intense though it be, by the spouses, does not legitimize recourse to techniques which are contrary to the truth of human procreation and to the dignity of the new human being. The desire for a child gives no right to have a child. The latter is a person, with the dignity of a 'subject.' As such, it cannot be desired as an 'object.' The fact is that the child is a subject of rights: the child has the right to be conceived only with full respect for its personhood."

A British television network admitted Thursday that it fell for an actor pretending to be the CEO of Fame Daddy, allegedly a soon-to-be-launched paternity matching service that claims to have “scoured the globe” for well-known celebrities that have “agreed to share their genetic inheritance for the benefit of our clients…and mankind.”

ITV’s This Morning apologized to viewers after hosting a man named Dan Richards, who claimed to be the group’s marketing director, according to the BBC.  The network now said that it appears Richards is a paid actor and that the company is nothing but a hoax....

According to The Independent, the whole thing was actually a promotion for  a TV comedy show. “Fame Daddy is not a real organisation,” read a statement published in The Telegraph (which also fell for the hoax) by a company called 2LE Media. ”In fact it’s entirely made up, and is part of a satirical comedy / entertainment programme that we are producing for Channel 4,” the statement said.

"When a child is begotten through the conjugal act, he comes to be as a gift from God, a gift crowning the spouse's mutual gift of themsleves to each other.  When a child is 'produced' it comes to be, not as a gift from God, which in truth it is, but as a product of human control."

 Fame Daddy will offer would-be-mothers “top quality celebrity surrogate fathers” when it launches next February, according to Dan Richards, its chief executive.

Prices will start at £15,000 for a premium sperm service from the clinic.

The company’s website, which launched last week, claims that women can pick from a range of celebrated high-achievers when picking a prospective father for their offspring. The identities of each high-flying father will kept secret as the donors have been guaranteed anonymity. The men will also be required to sign a legal waiver of their rights to access to the child.

However would-be mothers using the Fame Daddy clinic will be able to identify their area of achievement and other personal attributes.

They can choose from donor dads who have excelled in a range of fields including sport, entertainment and business. The website lists a range of “sample profiles” of typical sperm donors, including an Oscar-winning actor, a member of the House of Lords and an ex-Premiership footballer.

"To be able to harvest potential from the global gene pool, rather than from the more limited selection of the men she comes into direct contact with, is a major evolutionary leap for women."

Epigenetics is a game changer. What is epigenetics? It is a field of study that looks at how and why genes are turned on and off. Scientists are discovering that our genetics are not simply determined by the sequence of DNA we inherit from our parents. We also can inherit their pattern of gene expression; which of their genes are turned on or off. Gene expression can be influenced by environment: what we eat, our level of stress, whether we exercise, our exposure to toxins. And modern science is telling us that the changes in gene expression that occur because of the way we choose to live our lives, can be inherited not just by our children, but also by our grandchildren.

Doctors have been telling men for years that smoking, drinking and recreational drugs can lower the quality of their sperm. What doctors should probably add is that the health of unborn children can be affected by what and how much men eat; the toxins they absorb; the traumas they endure; their poverty or powerlessness; and their age at the time of conception. In other words, what a man needs to know is that his life experience leaves biological traces on his children. Even more astonishingly, those children may pass those traces along to their children....

The best-known example of the power of nutrition to affect the genes of fathers and sons comes from a corner of northern Sweden called Overkalix. Until the 20th century, Overkalix was cut off from the rest of the world, unreachable by road, train or even, in wintertime, boat, because the frozen Baltic Sea could not be crossed. Thus, when there were bad harvests in Overkalix, the children starved, and when there were good harvests, they stuffed themselves.

More than a decade ago, three Swedish researchers dug up records from Overkalix going back to 1799 in order to correlate its children’s health data with records of regional harvests and other documents showing when food was and wasn’t available. What the researchers learned was extremely odd. They found that when boys ate badly during the years right before puberty, between the ages of 9 and 12, their sons, as adults, had lower than normal rates of heart disease. When boys ate all too well during that period, their grandsons had higher rates of diabetes.

When the study appeared in 2002, a British geneticist published an essay speculating that how much a boy ate in prepuberty could permanently reprogram the epigenetic switches that would govern the manufacture of sperm a few years later. And then, in a process so intricate that no one agrees yet how it happens but probably has something to do with the germline (the reproductive cells that are handed down to children, and to children’s children), those reprogrammed switches are transferred to his sons and his sons’ sons.

They are spending up to £30,000 a time on trips to New York, to guarantee a boy or a girl, according to a clinic.

Clients include senior British politicians, claims Dr Jeffrey Steinberg, the Cambridge-trained IVF specialist who heads the Fertility Institutes clinic in Manhattan....

However, sex selection for social or ‘family balancing’ reasons was made illegal in the UK in October 2009, after the government amended the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990.

Under the legislation, sex selection is only allowed for medical reasons, such as to avoid the risk of a child being born with a sex-linked genetic disorder like Duchenne muscular dystrophy, which only presents in boys. Similar laws exist in many other countries.

No such stipulations exist in many US states, with IVF clinics there seeking to capitalise on a growing desire among wealthy couples from around the world to design their families rather than leaving it to chance. Speaking to the Evening Standard, Dr Steinberg, who trained alongside IVF pioneer Robert Edwards at the Bourne Hall Clinic, which is linked to Cambridge University, said 15 per cent of clients at the New York centre were British....

[Steinberg] admitted clients from some countries were almost exclusively interested in boys. Demand from China - currently under pressure to revoke its controversial one child policy - was 98 per cent for boys, he said, while from India it was 97 per cent.

Britain’s first gay fathers have have spent £65,000 travelling to the U.S. so they can undergo IVF treatment which will ensure their next child is a girl.

Barrie and Tony Drewitt-Barlow, from Chelmsford, Essex, hit the headlines 12 years ago when they they became they became the first same-sex couple to be legally recognised in the UK.

They have used a surrogate mother and egg donors to father four boys and a girl, spending more than £1 million in the process, but they are now desperate for another daughter and have looked to overseas fertility specialists so they can choose the baby's sex.

It is currently illegal to use IVF in the UK for sex selection purposes other than for medical reasons.

Two weeks ago, three embryos were implanted in a surrogate mother in California that the pair chose to provide their new baby.

India's surrogate mothers are risking their lives. They urgently need protection
As rich westerners flock to India's unregulated baby factories, impoverished surrogates suffer appalling conditions

Premila Vaghela, a poor 30-year-old surrogate mother, died last month, while reportedly waiting for a routine examination at a hospital in Ahmedabad. The news was barely covered by the media – after all, she had completed the task she had been contracted for, and the eight-month-old foetus meant for an American "commissioning" parent survived....

Most mothers sign contracts agreeing that even if they are seriously injured during the later stages of pregnancy, or suffer any life-threatening illness, they will be "sustained with life-support equipment" to protect the foetus. Further, they usually agree to assume all medical, financial and psychological risks – releasing the genetic parents, their lawyers, the doctors and all other professionals from all liabilities.

Besides, in tragic cases like Premila's, the hospital would have quickly paid out the money owed for a 'successful' birth, so the family would be unlikely to complain. Premila herself had gone in for the surrogacy to provide her own two children a better life. In a country where thousands of women die every year in normal childbirths, who would complain about the death of one surrogate?

Anindita Majumdar, who is researching surrogacy for her doctorate, says she is personally distressed by how easily the "sheer horror" of it all is being swept away by the money paid out to the surrogates. There are many grey areas - and she fears that even the draft legislation, when it is passed, will favour the medical community over the rights of the surrogate.

Already many malpractices, such as implantation of more than four embryos in the surrogate's womb, as well as invasive "foetal reduction" frowned on the world over, are being followed. Often women undergo caesareans so the time of birth suits the commissioning parents....

I found that medical practitioners involved in it are rarely troubled about the fate of the women whose normal maternal cycles have been disrupted. As in Premila's case, they seem to be only interested in delivering the end-product: a child.

Megan
My son was born through surrogacy – commercial surrogacy in India to be exact. We had the help of an egg donor, a different woman to our surrogate, and I am forever grateful to both these amazing women for the giving us the joy of our son Toby. You are making an ill-informed assumption that children born through surrogacy are in any way custom made. There is nothing special or different about Toby being born through egg donation and surrogacy as if i had given birth to him myself with use of my own eggs, other than the fact he was loved so much by three women, who wanted to give him life.

Wesley J. Smith
Megan: Just because you had a baby in that way doesn’t mean it is morally right. J means reproduction has become commercial and consumerist. Have you ever thought that your desire created a terrible impact on the surrogate mother? It often does.

Megan
@Wesley J. Smith, Maybe not morally right for you, but my morals aren’t your morals and you can jump up and down all you like about morality, there is no right morality or wrong morality or one-size fits all morality. How exactly do you know about impact on surrogate mothers? How many have you spoken to?

Wesley J. Smith
So, nobody has a right to want a certain public policy because you got what you wanted? Sorry, not how the world works, nor should it. You should read the stories of the problems with these Indian women. Then be proud.

The Kretchmar home is filled with the hum of a breathing machine and the sounds of Mario racing around a television screen watched by 22-month old Jaxon.

“MMMMaaarrrrioooo…,” he mutters under the clear mask which covers most of his tiny face. He’s yelling, but it’s hard to understand, because his voice is so muffled and his body is shaking.  The shaking is a good thing. The special vest he is wearing, while he getting his breathing treatment, helps shake the congestion loose inside his little body.

Jaxon is battling cystic fibrosis. He was diagnosed just days after he was born. The new vest, breathing treatments, up to 20-pills a day.  It’s all part of fighting the pulmonary disease.

In 2009, the Kretchmars turned to the New England Cryogenic Center, NECC, near Boston, when they needed help conceiving Jaxon. The sperm bank’s website talks about having a “healthy baby.” It states: “No specimens are released until it has been tested” for a list of diseases including cystic fibrosis....

The Kretchmars chose donor N170. The questionnaire they received described him as  a dad, a criminal justice major, and a Catholic man with clean family health history. The Kretchmars bought three vials of N170. And, on April 17, 2010, Jaxon was born.

Because human life starts well before birth, it is no surprise that human learning starts well before birth.  Science is showing us that the 9 months spent inside our mother's womb is a time we take cues from our mother and her environment.  Some of these cues will stay with us for our entire lives.  In this fascinating TED video, Annie Murphy Paul explains:

So if food is abundant in the womb then we fine tune our metabolism for a life of abundance.  If food is scarce, we prepare for a life of famine.  If life for mom is stressful, then we develop a sensitivity to stress preparing for a stress filled life.  Culture is not something that we learn only outside the womb, but inside as well.  From the melodies of language to the spices in our mother's food, the place we are gestated matters.

Which makes me wonder about the confusion of a baby who was carried not by its own mother, but by a surrogate.  The baby will certainly prefer the surrogate's voice no matter how much her genetic mother spoke to her from the outside.  And that voice will suddenly disappear.

And what about children who are frozen as embryos and shipped overseas to be carried by a woman half a world away with a strange language and a totally different diet?  How much stress and confusion do they feel after birth when suddenly the culture they knew is no longer there.

For babies who are adopted this is the norm of course.  But adoption is making the best of a situation that is not ideal.  With surrogacy, parents choose to put their child in what must be a very confusing situation.

I always come back to this passage from the Catechism of the Catholic Church because the more we learn about what goes on in the womb and procreation in general the more it makes sense.  This passage is so often maligned but it makes clear that the Church supports the right of a child to be conceived by, gestated by, and born to his or her genetic parents:

2376 Techniques that entail the dissociation of husband and wife, by the intrusion of a person other than the couple (donation of sperm or ovum, surrogate uterus), are gravely immoral. These techniques (heterologous artificial insemination and fertilization) infringe the child's right to be born of a father and mother known to him and bound to each other by marriage. They betray the spouses' "right to become a father and a mother only through each other." 

Many couples turn to assisted reproductive technology (ART), such as in vitro fertilisation (IVF), for help, but Galway GP and fertility specialist Dr Phil Boyle believes that these interventions do not do enough to address the underlying causes of infertility.

“Infertility is not an acute condition,” he says. “It is a chronic health condition that often has several underlying causes which, if diagnosed and treated correctly, will result in restoration of normal reproductive function. Physicians ought to consider broader diagnostic possibilities in their evaluation of infertile couples."

“The key to the success of NaPro is the use of the FertilityCare charting system, which allows us to identify abnormal menstrual bleeding patterns, poor cervical mucous flow and subtle hormonal deficiencies that are often not detected by routine gynaecological evaluation. The goal of treatment is to restore a normal appearance to the fertility chart and restore optimum fertility potential for the couple,” says Boyle.

“Our success rates have been improving over the years since we started in Galway,” says Boyle. “In the general population we have a 40 to 50 per cent success rate, while in older couples with a history of failed IVF we have an average 30 per cent success rate. We have about 300 conceptions a year and more than 1,200 babies born at this stage.

Louise McMullan and her husband, Eamonn, a GP in Omagh, have three daughters – Alice (11), Lucy (eight) and Rose (five) – all born through NaPro technology.

“Nobody seemed willing to find out what was wrong with me. They seemed happy to accept a diagnosis of unexplained infertility and to have people pay thousands of pounds for IVF. After another year on Clomid without getting pregnant, IVF was recommended, and I had that done a couple of times. I produced lots of eggs, but it didn’t work. It was a terrible time....

“The following day I contacted Phil and made an appointment to see him in Galway. We also saw a tutor in Navan, who taught us how to chart. We went to Phil in June with a couple of charts and he could see I was not ovulating, so he gave me Clomid and a drug to enhance mucous. He was able to tell from my charts that my period was coming too quickly after ovulation and that the egg could never implant. I had to inject the hormone hCG on days three, five, seven and nine after ovulation to give the eggs a chance to implant.

“I starting doing this at the end of August and was pregnant at the start of September. Had Phil not been on The Late Late Show, I don’t think I would have ever have had any babies because I would never have found out that my eggs could not implant.

Humans are a species set apart.  We have a strong innate desire to know (and be raised by) our genetic parents.  And this desire does not cease when we can take care of ourselves.  It extends well into adulthood.  No where is this more apparent than in the adult children of anonymous sperm donors who are desperate to discover who they are and where they came from.  The fertility industry has no desire to help them because the industry's focus is on what the parents want(ed) and not on the emotional or physical well-being of the resulting children.

Anonymous Father's Day is a film about adults of anonymous sperm donors and their perspective which is the one we most need to hear.  Here is the official trailer:

My favorite quote is from the gentleman who said, "It is quite possible to be grateful for your life and question aspects of your conception." So very true. It is beyond time to question the use of third party gametes in creating children. Children who may be desperate to know their genetic parents and may never get the answers they deserve.

The heartbreak in the voices of these adults reminds me of the often maligned but so wise Church teaching that a child has a right to be conceived by and born to his or her parents.  From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

2376 Techniques that entail the dissociation of husband and wife, by the intrusion of a person other than the couple (donation of sperm or ovum, surrogate uterus), are gravely immoral. These techniques (heterologous artificial insemination and fertilization) infringe the child's right to be born of a father and mother known to him and bound to each other by marriage. They betray the spouses' "right to become a father and a mother only through each other."

I am a donor-conceived adult.  Only about 10% of us even know the truth of our conception, the rest will forever be living a lie to themselves and their heirs.  
Our best interests and our lives are forever tied to an unregulated multi-billion dollar industry.  We are threatened by the infertility industry and by society simply because we ask the question "who am I?".  We are brainwashed and lied to by those who should care about us the most.  Our entire lives are comprised of lies, even our birth certificates are fraudulent documents, nowhere mentioning that our biological father is a sperm donor, let alone his name.  

A retired teacher who gave birth at 57 through IVF now admits that she was too old to have a child.

Susan Tollefsen sparked an ethical storm after becoming Britain’s oldest first-time mother when she had daughter Freya using sperm from her partner Nick Mayer, who is 11 years her junior, and a donor egg.

Now aged 61 and separated from Mr Mayer, she believes there should be an age limit of 50 for IVF treatment for women in the UK.

The pensioner said she had split from Mr Mayer in part because of the ‘shock’ of having a child so late in life.

‘I get a great emotional feeling when I look at her, and a sadness when I realise time’s running out. If I could change just one thing, I would wish to be younger so I could enjoy watching Freya grow up, get married and have children of her own.

One has to feel sorry for [Susan], because she took advantage of something society offered her. But I think it shows that we need to have a bit more respect for nature, which seems to know how hard it is to look after a child when you are older. There is a very good reason the menopause comes when it does. IVF and egg-donating are creating a lot of unnatural situations.

Carrie Mathews of Windsor, Colo., said she became a surrogate because she just wanted to provide a couple with children.

Despite that simple desire,  Mathews said she nearly died after giving birth to the twins she carried for Theresa and Rudolf Bakos of Austria, and her family now finds itself entangled  in a  legal and financial imbroglio.

Mathews and the Bakoses signed a contract more than 30 pages long, which outlined payment for all possible scenarios during pregnancy. She would get paid $25,000 to carry the child — $2,000 per month, to be placed in an escrow account.

But Mathews’ pregnancy was anything but smooth. After undergoing in vitro fertilization at a clinic in Cyprus (recommended by the National Adoption and Surrogacy Center), she became pregnant with twins. She told the news channel she was “extremely sick” throughout the pregnancy, experienced severe swelling, developed preeclampsia, followed by HELLP syndrome, which causes  low platelets  and elevated liver enzymes.

Even after Mathews delivered the twins back home in Colorado via Ceasarean section, she still experienced physical problems. She was rushed into an emergency operation for internal bleeding only hours after giving birth.

“While I was in the OR, I died and had to be resuscitated,” she told 9News. Mathews spent 20 days in the hospital after delivering the children for the Barkoses.

In the meantime, the Bakoses brought their new babies home to Austria, but  Hilary Neiman, an attorney for the National Adoption and Surrogacy Center, whose website is no longer functional, told 9News that the couple still owed Mathews more than $14,000. Mathews said Neiman could not reach the couple in Austria.

Mathews now owes more than $217,000 in medical expenses that stem from her pregnancy complications.

Posted with permission

I am a donor-conceived adult.  Only about 10% of us even know the truth of our conception, the rest will forever be living a lie to themselves and their heirs.  
Our best interests and our lives are forever tied to an unregulated multi-billion dollar industry.  We are threatened by the infertility industry and by society simply because we ask the question "who am I?".  We are brainwashed and lied to by those who should care about us the most.  Our entire lives are comprised of lies, even our birth certificates are fraudulent documents, nowhere mentioning that our biological father is a sperm donor, let alone his name.  

Clinics and doctors are legally able to destroy any and all records pertaining the the creation of us, including the identity and medical history of our biological parent.  Better records are kept of livestock than of us.  We are the most sought after human commodity in modern times, and we are the product of a financial transaction.

Countries and states across the globe are rectifying this century old status quo and stepping up against the infertility industry and demanding changes in anonymity, payment, and the treatment of the adults already conceived through "donated gametes".  Yet America refuses to listen and instead turns a blind eye to the grave injustices being played out on us in compensation for allowing an industry to function solely by its own self-set regulations that are tipped in their favor.

I work very hard but I will never have millions of dollars.  I will never have the political power that comes with this wealth and the ability to sway politicians to my point of view.  I will never have the lobbying power that is attached to the infertility industry.  

All I have is my voice.  I am the 99%.  We are the 99%.

It has become more common place that infertile couples are using IVF to create embryos and then hiring surrogate mothers to carry those embryos. Most surrogacy agreements require payment to the surrogate mother which can cost anywhere from $30,000 to $100,000 USD.  Western couples are looking for cheaper options.  Many are now turning to women from third world countries to carry their IVF embryos.  A new book by Scott Carney called the The Red Market: On the Trail of the World's Organ Brokers, Bone Thieves, Blood Farmers, and Child Traffickers takes a critical look at international surrogacy especially in India.  After Oprah did a whole show on a Western couple's use of an Indian surrogate through Dr. Nayna Patel's surrogacy service at the Akanksha Fertility Clinic in Anand, India, the waiting list for Dr. Patel's services is now in the hundreds.  The Oprah show painted the surrogacy arrangement as a win-win for both the Indian woman and the Western couple.  The couple gets a baby and the Indian surrogate gets more money that she could earn in a lifetime.

International surrogacy may look all sparklely and clean on the outside but Carney looks closer at Patel's clinic.  He reports that surrogates there are kept under lock and key for the entire pregnancy.  They are often forced to deliver by C-section even though C-sections carry a double to quadruple risk of death during childbirth.  Indian surrogates are paid much less than their Western counterparts.  While an American surrogate would get 50-75% of the total fees, and Indian surrogate receives only 25%.  

Carney points out that due to the lure of easy money, some surrogates are pressured into it by their families.  He recounts the story of a young woman named Easwari, who died after giving birth at a surrogacy clinic in Coimbatore in 2009.  She was pressured by her husband Murugan to make the family extra money after he had seen ads in the local newspaper calling for surrogates.

Carney also discusses the practice of "selective reduction" that goes on in Patel's clinic.  Selective reduction is a euphemistic term referring to the killing of one or more multiple fetuses in the womb.  He reports that Patel's clinic often implants as many as five embryos at a time and writes:

Several of the surrogates I met in Anand were pregnant with twins.  In cases where three or more embryos take, the Askanska clinic selectively aborts specific embryos to bring the total down to a more manageable levels.  They do this often without asking permission of the intended parents or the surrogates.

When I was told by my doctor they could get someone in Stockton, I don't know what they are eating, what they are doing.  Their physical environment would have been a concern for me.  The way they have things set up [in India] is that the surrogate's sole purpose is to carry a healthy baby for someone.

There was an intensity in her eyes.  It was hard for her, and you could see how much she cared for Daniella.

Another says that she will find it difficult to give up the baby she is carrying. “It is up to the child to remember us,” she says. “We will remember the child for the rest of our lives.”

Surrogacy is a form of labor.  But its an exploitative one, similar to child labor and sweat shops driven by Western consumerism....  I challenge the notion...that hospitals are operating above board when driven by a profit motive.

Our society loves a good IVF story.  One with a teary-eyed couple bouncing a much-loved cherub-checked baby on their lap.  You can just hear the collective "ahhhhh."  The ugly truth about IVF is the large scale manufacturing and discarding of human life that went into that one success.  A recent report from the UK states that for every 1 IVF success, more than 30 embryos are created.  From the UK Daily Mail:

More than 30 human embryos are created for every successful birth by IVF,official figures have revealed.

Hundreds of thousands have been simply thrown away or destroyed in the name of  scientific research over the past 20 years.

The figures show that British scientists have created more than three million human embryos by IVF since 1991. But fewer than 100,000 have been successfully implanted into women to result in live births in that period.

Nearly a million and a half were discarded in the course of treatment and more than 100,000 were given for research in destructive experiments.
Lord Alton of Liverpool, a veteran pro-life campaigner, said he found the Department of Health figures ‘staggering’.

He said: ‘We are creating and destroying human embryos on an industrial scale.’

I have long said that IVF was human manufacturing and it seems Lord Alton agrees.  I am all for the teary-eyed couple getting the cherub-cheeked baby that they so desperately want, but 30 other lives should not have to be created and discarded or destroyed in the process.

There is an effective alternative to IVF that actually treats infertility instead of just manufacturing embryos.  NaPro Technology (Natural Procreative Technology) is the ethical way to treat infertility.  Developed by Thomas W. Hilgers, MD, NaPro Technology focuses on a woman's reproductive health and "provides medical and surgical treatments that cooperate completely with the reproductive system."  Thirty years of studying hormonal changes in a woman's cycle and the underlying causes of infertility has culminated in an alternative way to treat infertility that does not replace sexual intercourse or create life outside the body.  NaPro Technology has great results as well.  NaProTechnology has been shown to be 3 times more effective than IVF.  Couples that failed with IVF succeeded with NaPro Technology.  It is cheaper than IVF, does not require egg retrieval or donation, and since it treats the underlying cause of infertility, it allows for couples to get pregnant again and again.  NaPro Technology has also been proven effective in preventing miscarriage and premature births.  To find a NaPro Technology provider near you visit The Fertility Care Centers of America

In preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), a cell or two is taken from days old embryos produced with in vitro fertilization (IVF) and then that cell is tested for as many as 6,000 different traits.  The embryos that do not make the genetic cut get discarded, thrown in the freezer for later or donated to research.  PGD began as a way to for couples that carry genetic disease to ensure their children were disease free.  But in the United States and many other countries, it is has gone way beyond eliminating diseased embryos to "family balancing" where only embryos of the right sex are implanted.  The other sex is out of luck.  PGD is also used for the creation of "savior siblings" where only embryos that are a genetic match to an sick sibling are chosen for implantation.  The embryo, then the child, is created simply to be a tissue donor for an existing child.

Until recently, Germany has rejected PGD.  They, unlike the United States, remember their history of eugenics.  The Germans fear that PGD can be used to select for other traits like blue eyes and blond hair.  And while PGD cannot be used to "design" babies, it can be used to build a more genetically "perfect" generation.  PGD smacks of creating a "master race," and because of their history, the Germans see it.  Unfortunately, Germany has recently allowed PGD, but only in cases where parents carry genetic disease.  From Reuters:

Germany's parliament agreed in a conscience vote on Thursday to allow the limited use of genetic testing of human embryos.

Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) -- in which a cell or two are extracted from a developing embryo to test for genetic disorders -- has divided governments around the world, with many people opposing it on religious and ethical grounds, or arguing that it would let parents choose a "designer baby."

The new law will allow screening embryos of parents who have a predisposition to severe genetic disorders, where a pregnancy would be likely to result in either stillbirth or miscarriage.

Many scientists, news outlets and others talk about PGD like it eliminates disease.  But PGD does not cure anything.  It simply gets rid of the individuals with the disease.  Imagine applying the PGD way of "treating" disease to cystic fibrosis (CF), a common genetic disease among Caucasians.  The PGD way of "treating" CF would dispose of all of the people with CF and then declare that the disease was eliminated.  PGD is not medicine, it is throwing the baby out with the dirty genetic bathwater.

At least some in Germany understand the road that allowing PGD places them on.  From LifeSiteNews:

“Parents should not have to apologize if they do not have a so-called perfect baby,” said Deputy Wolfgang Zoeller of the conservative Christian Social Union.

Roman Catholic Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, the chairman of the Episcopal Conference, called the law “a violation of the principle of respecting human dignity.”

Wolfgang Thierse, of the opposition Social Democrats, also said the screening would “violate a person’s right to life.”

    Brännström says he will transplant the womb itself, plus all uterine arteries and veins to supply and drain blood from the organ. No nerves will be transplanted. Then the recipient will receive low doses of immunosuppressive drugs to prevent rejection. He expects the organ will be accepted more easily than most transplants because pregnancy itself is an immunoprivileged condition, in which foreign material from the father is accepted by the body's immune system. An immediate pregnancy "will probably help the uterus to be accepted", he says.

In the discussions about this uterine transplant there are two perspectives that are always missing.  The first is the health of the child that has to be gestated in this foreign uterus.  There is absolutely no concern for this child that is so desperately wanted.  There is no research on this in humans at all.  What if something goes wrong?  What if the child is permanently damaged because the uterus did not work properly?  To "test" this uterus transplant means to put the health and life of an innocent child at risk.  There is no time when that will not be the case.  Once again the mantra in the fertility industry is "do it first and see if it the child turns out alright later."

The second perspective that is overlooked is the health and life of the donor.  It is true that the mother wants to give her daughter a uterus, but is it ethical?  In live organ donor scenarios, risking the health and life of the donor has to have a corresponding life-saving benefit for the recipient.  Otherwise it is just not worth the risk.   It is not ethical to have the mother undergo invasive surgery just so her daughter can get pregnant.  Wesley J. Smith sums it up:

I know I am spitting in the wind, but that’s my job. We permit voluntary organ donations of one kidney or a slice of liver.  While things usually work out fine, there is no question the donation risks the health or life of the donor.  But the point is to save a life....

I don’t think this should be done.  The donor’s body is not going to be violated (in the non pejorative sense) to save a life, but permit the recipient’s deeply desired dream to come true.  I understand and empathize with the yearning, but is it worth the donor dying or health complications should that unlikely event occur? At some point, do doctors have to refuse to “harm” the donor–even if that is what the donor wants? I think so, and that probably makes three of us–me, myself, and I.

I am with you Wesley and so are many others who can cut through the fuzzy thinking and warm, toasty feelings.  Anytime a parent is willing to risk the health and life of a future child just so they are genetically related, I call it genetic vanity.  I think this section of the Charter for Health Care Workers is more than pertinent:

    "The desire for a child, sincere and intense though it be, by the spouses, does not legitimize recourse to techniques which are contrary to the truth of human procreation and to the dignity of the new human being. The desire for a child gives no right to have a child. The latter is a person, with the dignity of a 'subject.' As such, it cannot be desired as an 'object.' The fact is that the child is a subject of rights: the child has the right to be conceived only with full respect for its personhood." – CHCW, 25

I apologize for my lack of blogging of late , but I have been very busy putting together and giving talks on all kinds of things from the ethics of genetic testing to the ethics of human genetic engineering. 

I am taking a break to share this gem with my readers, if I still have any.  After watching a commercial for birth control that limits women to only 4 menstrual periods a year, Josh at Just West of Crunchy is upset.  He writes in "Thank-you for menstruating.  Keep it up.":

To be clear, I’m not anti-technology or anti-medicine.

What I am opposed to is screwing with our health in radical and unnecessary ways and pretending that we have any clue what the consequences are.

So you put a bunch of women into a four-periods-a-year medical trial, take notes on the consequential oddities (occasional indiscriminate bleeding was one of them) and then –POW – let’s book some TV time, buy magazine ads, send out all the gynecologist swag and we’re up and running.

Never mind if we really, really don’t understand the long-term consequences of manipulating hormone levels for the sheer convenience of it.

The human body is a beautiful, complex, elegant way to build a life form.  Your body is a million times more complex and interconnected than any Ferrari.  Pumping a woman’s body full of synthetic hormones for the sake of managing a natural function is about as sophisticated a solution as shoving a banana in your tailpipe to cut down on emissions.

Every action has a reaction and it freaks me out to think about the unintended consequences that come along with tinkering around with the biology that’s at the heart of fertility and womanhood.

You are welcome Josh!  And thank-you for pointing out what the Catholic Church has been saying for years.  Fertility is not a disease to be "cured" with a pill, especially one that takes away 8 periods a year.

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: