Last year, Bruce Feiler wrote a piece for The New York Times in which he began by regretting the bad behavior of his family at a reunion. He wondered whether his family was “falling apart.” That question prompted him to research what makes for a happy family.
Feiler found the work of Marshall Duke, a psychologist at Emory University. Duke came up with a questionnaire for children called the “Do You Know?” scale, which contained 20 questions about the child’s family history. Children were asked, among other things, if they knew where their mom and dad went to high school, where their grandparents grew up and which person they looked most like in their family.
What Duke found was surprising. The single best predictor of emotional health and happiness in children was how well they performed on the “Do You Know?” scale. Feiler wrote, “The more children knew about their family’s history, the stronger their sense of control over their lives, the higher their self-esteem and the more successfully they believed their families functioned.”
This finding may not be so surprising, considering the popularity of websites like Ancestry.com, where the creators invite visitors, “Join us on a journey through the story of how you became, well, you.” Even TLC has a genealogy show called Who Do You Think You Are? — which implies that our very identity is rooted in those people who not only begot us, but those who begot our parents and grandparents, as well.
I think future generations will look back on our insane notion of "reproductive rights," and they will be horrified. Back in the 70s reproductive rights meant terminating a life you already started. Today it also means creating life however you see fit and tossing out whatever doesn't suit your desires. So not only have we killed tens of millions of our own offspring in the name of these "reproductive rights," but we have also turned children into accessories, completing our idea of a perfect family, like a well-appointed scarf completes the perfect outfit.
Case in point, this admission of Australian mother, Jayne Cornwill. She proudly proclaims she "paid $50,000" for her girl, Emmerson. After having three sons, Jayne and her husband, healthy and fertile, were "forced" to travel to America and pay fertility doctor, Daniel Potter, to finally give them a girl. See most other civilized countries in the world think that choosing the sex of your child is barbaric and so have outlawed the practice, but here in the Brave New United States, whatever pays, plays.
Good grief. That is nearly all I can say about this growing trend of "free" sperm donors. If you are a woman looking to get pregnant and cannot afford to go to a sperm bank, then there are men out there willing to impregnate you for free. That is if you are fine with having sex with a complete stranger. Medical Daily has the story:
Joe considers himself to be a sort of Superman, except instead of flying around saving lives, he travels the UK making lives. Joe is a free sperm donor — that is, he has sex with women free of charge in order to impregnate them. While the service may sound a bit unorthodox, Joe claims he’s conceived more than 30 offspring and is far from the only man to tap into this hot business.
"Joe," who like Superman, chose to keep his identity a secret, jets around England to impregnate women through "natural insemination," the Daily Mail reported.
"I have a Clark Kent life. Then, I have the Superman life," Joe told ABC News' 20/20. "People might want to have millions of dollars in the bank, and then, you know, some of us might want to have dozens of children out there."
Surprisingly, Joe is married with three legitimate teenage children and also makes a living as a successful Internet entrepreneur. As for his side venture, business is booming because Joe estimates that he has slept with close to 100 women via his service....
His reason for wanting to offer his DNA free of charge? "I'm unable to have as many children as I want in my relationship. … I have the satisfaction of knowing that I have another descendant out there."
And just in case you think Joe is the only one out there, there are "free" sperm donor websites with thousands of members.
Setting aside the health risks and the fact that Joe is a serial adulterer, this trend really does illuminate how disconnected our society has become regarding sexual intercourse.
Naturally sex has two aspects. There is the love and bonding part between two potential parents and then there is the procreative part, the part that produces offspring. They are two parts of the same whole. One without the other and the act is only a shadow of what it was meant to be. I like to think of sex like a pair of scissors. Together the scissors work together beautifully. Separate the two parts and you could probably cut something, but it sure won't work as as well as when the two parts are joined together.
We unnaturally separated these two parts of sex when we decided that sex should only be for recreation and embraced widespread contraception use.
Then, with artificial insemination and IVF, we separated procreation from the sex act altogether bringing human reproduction into the sterile atmosphere of the laboratory.
Now we have come full circle and "free" sperm donors are providing the procreation the natural way without the bonding part. Now it is just sex with a stranger to make babies.
Babies that are going to ask where their father is. Babies that will likely have a innate desire to know and love their biological father. Imagine the devastation when these kids find out their mother had sex with a total stranger to bring them into existence. I cannot even imagine. Those poor children.
Creating children with sperm donation has gone on for a long time. In fact, the first documented case of a woman becoming pregnant by donor 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.
The woman was never told what was done to her. It seems somethings never change. Today's billion dollar fertility industry regularly uses woman desperate for children as guinea pigs for whatever new procedure a doctor can think up.
Over a century later and the practice has become even more bizarre and convoluted. Last week I stumbled upon this piece at the New Republic by Stephanie Fairyington. Stephanie fell in love with her lesbian partner Sabrina, and they were married. Visiting Sabrina's newborn niece, Del, brought out something unexpected in Stephanie:
Del planted an impossible desire in me: She made me want to corporealize my love for Sabrina, to create a biological record—a baby—of the fact that we were here and we loved one another.
Unable to conceive on their own, they needed sperm, but just any sperm donor would not do. For both women to have a biological connection to the "corporealization of their love" a relation would have to provide the sperm. So Stephanie asked her brother to be their donor.
Last week doctors in Sweden announced the birth of a baby after a uterus transplant. The baby is so far healthy being born at only 31 weeks gestation.
I am very happy that mother and baby are healthy enough to leave the hospital and I wish them continued health. I also wish that this procedure is quickly rejected by the greater medical establishment.
You might ask why a pro-life person would ever be against a procedure that brings life into the world. I am against the uterus transplant because I believe it is bad medicine.
Many people, including prominent bioethicist Father Tad Pacholczyk who compared a uterus transplant to a kidney transplant, believe that this is just like another other organ transplant and so a worthwhile endeavor. I have to respectfully disagree.
Kidneys are an organ that are necessary for life. A uterus is not. A woman is not going to die if she does not have a uterus. This is purely an elective procedure.
Elective procedures are not necessarily bad medicine, but when they put multiple lives at risk then we must call foul. In this case a live donor was used to obtain the uterus. Her life was put at risk for a very invasive procedure, the removal of her uterus. Then the woman who received the uterus also underwent invasive surgery and put her own life at risk. Then the child who was gestated in a donated womb had his or her life put at risk during the most critical part of human development. What if the mother began to reject the uterus? What does that mean for the fetus whose very life depends on the perfect functioning of that organ?
I am not the only one raising these important flags. Dr. Antonio Gargiulo, a specialist in infertility and reproductive surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, was interview by the Boston Globe and he lays it all out:
A live donor would have to undergo a radical hysterectomy, he said, which would remove a larger portion of the tissues surrounding the uterus than in a typical hysterectomy, so that those tissues could be connected with tissues of the recipient.
Such a surgery could cause excessive bleeding or injury to the bowel or the ureters, he said, and could lead to an infection that could develop into sepsis.
“It’s a major abdominal surgery,” he said.
There would be similar risks for the recipient, Gargiulo said, who would also require ongoing treatment with immunosuppressants to ensure that her body did not reject the transplanted organ, increasing her risk of cancer.
Finally, any fetus in the transplanted womb would be in potential danger because of the risk of rejection for the transplanted organ and the difficulty of properly connecting the complex web of blood vessels that support the uterus, which could affect the formation of the placenta.
“There are major doubts,” Gargiulo said.
So three lives put at risk during an elective procedure for a non-life threatening condition: the desire to experience pregnancy.
When it be enough? When will we draw a line and say "I am very sorry for the pain and anguish you experience because of your infertility, but this is a length to which we just cannot go."
I also see abuses in the future. When kidney and other organ transplants began I doubt anyone realized the massive demand that would result. A demand that fuels a black market organ trade which exploits the poor in third world countries. When surrogacy began, I bet no one envisioned hundreds of poor women in Asian countries being paid paltry amounts to carry the offspring of rich westerners.
I fear if uterus transplants become commonplace this is just one more way the rich will exploit those living in poverty not just overseas but in our own communities. If we can pay a woman to carry a child for us, then how much more would we pay for her uterus so that we can carry the child ourselves?
The chance for massive exploitation of poor women willing to sell their functioning uterus to the highest bidder scares me. Call me alarmist if you will, but considering the world we live in, I feel this is a real possibility.
There has been much commentary on the story of the lesbian couple that went to sperm bank, asked for sperm from a Caucasian, and ended up with a mixed race child. The women are now suing the sperm bank because they accidentally gave the couple the wrong sperm.
So far the debate has been whether or not the lesbian couple is racist. I will not address that issue because I believe there is something much larger at issue here. I want to instead highlight the legacy that decades of artificial reproductive technologies has left us: a society that sees children as products, no different then cars and fast food.
Here is a small sampling of actual comments I have read on this case. There are hundreds of others. Read them and tell me that many people in our society do not now see children as something that can be bought and paid for:
You should get what you paid for. It's not racist, pay for white baby, get white baby.
she asked and paid for a specific "product" and got something completely different. It's simple breach of contract....no racism.
She didn't get what she paid for; I don't think she's racist.
Bottom line is they purchased a service and it wasn't what they paid for period.
If you order a cheese burger at the drive thru and you end up getting McNuggets,. That doesn't mean that you hate chicken,it means you ordered a freaking cheese burger!
She's right..she didn't get what she paid for. I'd be upset too.
It's like getting a color TV delivered open the box and it's black and white. Ha ha. I guess u would be pissed.
she didnt get her order filled correctly
If I ordered a blue car and got a red one I would think you would want them to fix the problem
I say she should win the case she paid for a certain product and got something that wasn't what she paid for she's not racist at all if I pay for a Dr pepper I don't want a mountain dew
If people can go to fast food restaurant and get a burger however they choose, they should be able to decide if the baby they plan on having is black, white, etc.
Yes, she paid for a Caucasian baby!
This is the real story. It isn't about race. This is about an industry that has tricked us into believing human beings can be ordered, paid for, and evaluated like any other purchase.
We have made the most precious gifts the world has to offer into something that can be seriously compared with a fast food order. That is the real tragedy. Unfortunately, it is the children that will pay the price.
Paul Knoepfler is a stem cell researcher in California. His work focuses on the reasons pluripotent stem cells (both induced and embryonic) form tumors. He is also a writer and a blogger which is unusual for a research scientist.
Knoepfler does not oppose embryonic stem cell research or therapeutic cloning, but he does oppose the three-parent embryo technique also called mitochondrial replacement. On a recent blog about three-parent babies at the New York Times, Knoepfler wrote this comment:
I'm a stem cell researcher and one of the more vocal opponents of this technology....
It comes down to 2 key issues for me.
First, I don't believe that we have discussed the ethical and societal implications of human genetic modification sufficiently to move forward with actually doing this in people. It's a big deal and could be a first step toward eugenics as well.
Second, evidence suggests if we do this kind of embryo tinkering that inevitably there will be children born with chromosomal defects, developmental problems, and other issues that we just cannot predict. We also have no idea what this might mean for future generations.
Paul Knoepfler Associate Professor UC Davis School of Medicine
Dr. Knoepfler is correct. We have not truly discussed the implications of this procedure or how it will lead us further down the eugenics road we are already on. Make no mistake, this technique does not just screen out embryos, it engineers them.
Also, such an invasive intervention on the egg (or embryo) may lead to serious problems that we cannot predict. Knoepfler wrote on his blog:
In the hypothetical context of real-world assisted reproduction, moving one oocyte nucleus into the enucleated oocyte of another person could trigger all kinds of devastating problems (most likely through epigenetic changes) that might not manifest until you try to make a human being out of it.
Then it’s too late.
And it is also too late for every generation after. Is that really a chance we want to take? Do we have the moral authority to purposefully and intentionally inflict such abnormalities on future generations?
Dr. Knoepfler is telling us we should not proceed; we need to listen.
A surrogacy story gone wrong has recently made headlines all over the world: David and Wendy Farnell, an Australian couple, contracted with a Thai woman, Pattharamon Janbua, to carry their in vitro fertilization (IVF)-created embryos. Pattharamon gave birth to twins, a boy with Down syndrome and a girl. The Farnells took the girl home to Australia and left the boy, named Gammy, in Thailand.
The Farnells say that they were told that Gammy was going to die, so they left him behind. It is telling that nowhere in the couple’s statements do they mention going back to get him. Pattharamon is now committed to raising Gammy as a part of her family. In an ominous twist to an already tragic predicament, David Farnell is a sex offender who spent three years in jail for sexually molesting two 10-year-old girls. Now, Pattharamon wants the baby girl back, too. She has said, “Because she is my baby; she was in my womb.”
The Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano ran an op-ed commenting on Gammy’s story, stating, “In reality, there’s little to be indignant about: If you accept the logic of a child as a product, this is the obvious consequence.”
It is no secret that the stance of the Catholic Church — which categorically rejects the “logic” of regarding any child as a mere “product” — is wildly unpopular. In a society that thinks any way to make a baby is the right way to make a baby, the Church is often seen as a backward institution that rejects and shames infertile couples. We are labeled as “haters.”
There are dozens of countries around the world that have banned sex selection. Unfortunately, the United States is not one of them. That makes the U.S. a destination spot for couples who want just the right number of girls and boys in their family.
The United Kingdom is one of those places where selecting the sex of your embryos in the IVF process is prohibited. The Daily Mail reports that more and more Brits are coming to America to “choose” the sex of their next child.
There is one argument against the Hobby Lobby decision that is driving me crazy maybe because it is going unchallenged on Facebook pages and comboxes all over.
It goes like this: if Hobby Lobby can deny health insurance coverage for birth control, then what will stop a company owned by other religious nut jobs from denying blood transfusions, chemotherapy, or inhalers for asthma?
This one seems to make sense and I am sure many people do not see where it falls short. I am not expert on Constitutional Law or on health insurance in general but this seems pretty obvious to me.
Blood transfusions, chemotherapy, and inhalers are medicine. They are therapeutic in nature needed for those who are sick. These are exactly the kinds of things health insurance is supposed to pay for. Any employer religious or otherwise is going to have a very tough time having a legitimate claim for not including well-known therapeutic measures for their employees because these are actually "health care."
Birth control is different. Of course there are cases where the pill is prescribed for medical reasons, but I speak only about birth control for the prevention of pregnancy. In this case birth control is not medicine nor is it therapeutic. Birth control actuals takes something that is normal, fertility, and makes it not work properly. Birth control is not even remotely in the same class as blood transfusions, chemotherapy or inhalers.
Really birth control is something that allows people to engage in baby-making behavior without making babies. That is not medicine; it is a life style choice no different from condoms, other barrier methods or even permanent sterilizations. Employers are not required to cover life style choices like condoms in their policies because they are not something health insurance should cover.
I have not heard a single man shouting about how his employer is denying him access to his condoms. Why? Probably because when it comes to men's reproductive systems we can still engage in calm and clear reasoning without hysterical hyperbole.
If a man wants to engage in baby-making behavior without making a baby we make him pay for it.
Ladies, we want equality do we not? Or is this really about getting more than "health care" and making someone else pay for it?
The Church has always been against third-party reproduction and that is because the Church has always been focused on the needs of the child and not on the wants of the parents.
Humans have a universal desire to love and be loved by our biological parents. That requires that we know and be known by our biological parents; a scenario purposefully denied those children of anonymous sperm or egg donation.
The Church knows that connection to our biological parents is part of the rights of a child. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:
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.
This right is ignored by the fertility industry in order to grease the wheels of profit and give desperate parents what they want. After decades of creating children that can never know their biological progenitors, the cracks are beginning to show as more and more donor-conceived adults are speaking out. Here are just two snippets from AnonymousUs.org:
I look at history, and there are dads, I look at wildlife, there are dads, I look at society and there are dads. Dads are everywhere, maybe its media but I feel like I'm missing out. I feel like I will never know what it's like to be in the arms of a man who loves me unconditionally in a innocent non-sexual way, and who will be my other half. I will never know what it's like to bond with my other genetic parent, I will never know what it's like to look at the rest of nature and know I was conceived the way I was suppose to be...you know, outside a science lab....and not on a dish to be shoved into a refrigerator.
And:
I have a tape of my donor's voice, answering questions. Some are deep queries about his personal beliefs, but others are trivial. Those are the ones that make me cry. Questions like 'what's your favorite movie?' He gave the same answer as me and it confused and delighted me. After hearing in him all the traits in me the rest of my family doesn't understand, I felt like i'd missed out on something spectacular, to be understood by the person partially responsible for my existence.... It seems odd and horrorible at the same time that two people who have never even laid eyes on each other have a child. I hate that my dad got paid. I hate that he was probably just some guy who was broke and needed a little bit of pocket cash. No matter how great of a guy he was, he just wanted the money. And even though I think about him all the time, he has no idea I that exist.
Now, Dr. Keith Ablow has thrown down the gauntlet. In an opinion piece at FoxNews, Ablow calls for anonymous sperm and egg donation be outlawed. Why? Because it violates the rights of the very children it creates:
Without seemingly having given it much thought at all, our society now allows tens of thousands or more of men and women to create children who will never know one or sometimes both of their biological parents, because states allow these anonymous donations. And this policy inherently presupposes that bearing children who have no opportunity to know their biological fathers or mothers does not deprive them of anything that is inherently theirs – as a fundamental human right.
I disagree. I believe that it is morally wrong to put in place a social architecture that means millions of children will not know their biological parents.
Am I saying it would be better that these children not be born? I am.
Anonymous sperm and ova donation presupposes that the biological connection between parents and children is without much value at all – since in a wholesale (or shall I say, retail) manner, we sanction an ever-increasing number of kids being born who have no idea who their biological fathers and mothers are and can never find out, period.
Harsh? Yes. True? Another yes.
Ablow makes the necessary distinction between adoption, which is an attempt to solve a problem and anonymous gamete donation which creates and perpetuates a problem:
Anonymous sperm and ova donation solves no problem of any child. It is a convenience to adults who are encountering fertility problems and would prefer the convenience of jettisoning part of their child's true life history in order to commandeer that child from its true biological father or mother.
Thank-you Dr. Ablow for speaking the uncomfortable truth. It is time our society put the health and well-being of children over the desires of perspective parents.
This week the genetics world exploded with discussion about a new patent just issued by the U.S. Patent Office to a California company, 23andMe. 23andMe is a direct-to-consumer genetic testing company that offers genetic information to anyone who sends in a saliva sample and a fee.
23andMe was offered a patent on their inheritance calculator, a feature where prospective parents can figure out the likely traits their children will have. The controversy surrounds the patent's extension into the fertility industry where this technology could be used to screen donor egg and sperm to create a child with desired physical attributes.
Nature reports some of the options listed in the patent:
Figure 4 of the patent application lists the following alternative choices: “I prefer a child with”: “longest expected life span”/“least expected life cost of health care”/“least expected cumulative duration of hospitalization.” Figure 6 visualizes a choice between the “offspring’s possible traits” of “0% likely endurance athlete” and “100% likely sprinter.”
Earlier this year, Dr. Robert Sparrow published a paper in the Journal of Medical Ethics entitled "In Vitro Eugenics." In it, Sparrow explores the possibility of creating generations of human beings in the laboratory.
He explains that the stem cells from embryos could be used to make egg and sperm cells, which, in turn, could create more embryos.
This would bring human reproduction into the laboratory not just for one generation, but for generation after generation. Sparrow explains that these embryos would be "orphaned at conception." They "would have no genetic parents: There would be no living individual … who could be described as the genetic progenitor of such embryos."
Sparrow calls this new possibility in human reproduction "in vitro eugenics."
While this sounds like something that could only happen in science fiction, producing egg and sperm from stem cells is now a reality. Scientists have already accomplished this in mice and are discussing doing the same in humans.
Why would anyone want to create multiple human generations in a laboratory?
It is undeniable that we humans have an innate desire to know from whom we came. Many people who are adopted or have only one parent will tell you that they feel they are missing a piece of a puzzle. Genealogy websites like Ancestry.com exist because of our fascination with our genetic ancestors. Every time I see an ad for Ancestry.com, a place where you "Find your ancestors’ stories" and "Discover yours," I feel that tug to find out more about my grandparents and great-grandparents. My daughter's junior year project for high school was a presentation and paper on the immigration of both sides of her family to America.
Now imagine if you were purposely denied one half of your story by a powerful industry that runs on anonymity. And what if when you pointed out the intentional injustice, you were told that you should shut-up and simply be grateful for your life.
This is the experience for many a child conceived from anonymous donor gametes. The following is a excerpt from testimony that Alana S. Newman, founder of AnonymousUs.org, gave to the California Assembly Committee on Health regarding AB460, a bill in the California legislature that would require insurers to offer coverage for infertility treatments even to same-sex couples where the relationships are, by nature, not fertile. Such treatments often require donor gametes. Alana is bravely standing up for the rights of those intentionally denied what she believes is a fundamental right: the right to a relationship with one's biological parents. She writes:
The facts of my conception are that my father was paid to abandon me. There is no dignity in that. I suffered from debilitating identity issues, mistrust of the opposite sex, hatred and condemnation of the opposite sex, feelings of objectification – like I only exist as a play – toy for others, and feeling like a science experiment.
If people can take away something so precious as a mother or father and make us feel like we should be grateful for the loss, what else can people take away from us? How do you expect the next generation to fight for things like freedom, democracy, clean air, clean water, when something as precious and basic as your mother or father is stolen from you? Removed by the state… Removed by a fertility industry that forces you into existence and then doesn’t return your calls when you grow up and start banging on their doors asking for records… Removed by a commissioning parent, often your other biological parent who vowed to protect and provide for you, but only on the contingency that you show gratitude for your life and don’t ask questions about the other missing parent....
One of the United State’s most famous civil rights leaders was Malcolm X. The “X” he used to replace his last name was a direct criticism of slave – owners removing slaves from their spouses, parents and children, and being disconnected from their ancestry and heritage. “Who do you think you are” is a popular TV show where celebrities have their genealogy investigated. Rosie O’Donnell herself expressed a craving to “discover her family as fully fleshed out people and learn about their journeys”. The sheer existence of a term and concept like genealogy demonstrates that it is unfair to minimize and marginalize donor – conceived people’s curiosities about our genetic kin, and dismiss our desire for connection.....
Having a bloated industry where medical and legal professionals profit from separating children from their biological parents is problematic.
Very few people like to hear that their choices have devastating consequences for others. If there is a place where voices like Alana's need to be heard, it is the fertility machine. Both infertile couples and the fertility industry must hear what she is saying. The desire for a child does not trump the right of a child to know his or her biological parents.
Wait a minute. I have heard that before. Oh yes, 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.
This is so incredibly sad for so many reasons. There is really nothing else to say. (I have already expressed my concerns about uterine transplants here.) From the UK'sDaily Mail:
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.
Part of being a blogger is learning that people, even ones on your side, will misread, misunderstand, and misrepresent what you are saying. Being human, many of us only read headlines, or skim through a piece missing the major points, or infer things that simply are not implied. Knowing this, I try not to let reactions to my posts get under my skin.
For some reason the reactions toyesterday's newsabout the pregnancy of the woman who underwent a uterus transplant really affected me. To recap, a woman born without a uterus was transplanted with a uterus from a deceased woman. She then underwent IVF and is now confirmed to be pregnant.
Many of the comments I have read state that the only thing wrong with this is the IVF. If she had gotten pregnant naturally this would be fine. I also read a lot of comments that compare a uterus transplant to a kidney or heart transplant. The thought is that if those are morally acceptable then this should be to.
I guess I am disheartened that many of the comments echo the sentiments of the rest of society: the emotional appeals to what the parents want with little thought to how a procedure affects the health and well-being of the child.
Let us think about this critically instead of emotionally.
A uterus transplant is not a necessary procedure. This woman was not going to die if she did not receive a womb. This is nothing like a kidney or heart transplant. The point was so that she could be pregnant evidenced by the fact that the uterus will be removed after the child is delivered.
Since the uterus came from a deceased woman, presumably no other lives were put at risk to retrieve the organ. This is not the case with a live uterus donor which is also being attempted. To put the health and safety of the otherwise healthy woman donating the uterus at risk to provide a organ that is not essential for life is not ethical.
Beyond the actual transplant, let us consider the child that is now being gestated in this transplanted uterus. This child was purposefully placed in a womb that is a potentially dangerous place. The mother has to take immunosuppressant drugs so she will not reject the uterus. As experts said there is significant risk of birth defects and pre-term labor here. The child was created in a lab and intentionally put at risk in an experimental womb just so that this woman could experience pregnancy.
Remember there is a PERSON in that womb whose life hangs in the balance. He or she could suffer life-long consequences. Is this treating him or her with the utmost respect deserving of every person?
Sure it would be nice if every woman with a deformed or malfunction uterus could get a replacement, but how many children do we need to put at risk to perfect this procedure? In other high-risk medical procedures like heart or kidney transplants, the possible reward outweighs the risk because the patient is already in a life-threatening situation. But with a uterus transplant there is no life-threatening illness to treat. Is it ethical to intentionally put the life of a child at risk for a non-life threatening problem?
There are a lot of medical advancements that we could have if we treated research subjects unethically. Let us not forget that the child is also a subject in this experiment. Are we treating him or her ethically or as a regrettable, but acceptable, causality if this fails?
I fear that the attitude toward this child is the same as all the children of artificial reproductive technologies (ART) that came before. The priority is what the parents want. The health and safety of the child is secondary. A recent review of ART in the Journal of Reproductive BioMedicine Online, written by scientists in the field, reiterates that idea that in the fertility industry, many have a "let's see if it works and ask questions about safety later" attitude. Is that what is happening here?
I think if we continue on with this perspective where the health and safety of the next generation is not the first priority, things like "in vitro eugenics" are sure to follow. Dr. Sparrow is right that concerns about safety are unlikely to stop the creation of generations of embryos in the lab because, so far, concerns about the children hasn't stopped any ART. It is up to us to be the voice of the voiceless.
I realize that the Catholic Church has not officially come out against uterus transplants, but that does not mean we cannot think critically about it and come to the conclusion that this is unethical. I often ask myself these questions when evaluating advances in biotechnology. I think it applies here:
Does this technology disrespect or unnecessarily endanger human life at any point from the very beginning to natural death? Does it reduce human life to a biological commodity? Does it require that a human organism be used or destroyed?
I have come to the conclusion that the uterus transplant does intentionally endanger the life of an innocent child simply so a woman can be pregnant. I know others disagree. I just want to make sure that the discussions surrounding this procedure are grounded in the MOST important consideration, the health and well-being of the child, and not in the emotional appeal to what adults desire.
Doctors have announced that the woman that received a womb transplant is now pregnant. From RedOrbit:
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.”
Now it is time to pray for that child. Pray that he or she is born healthy with no complications. We need to pray because even the doctors admit that things may go wrong:
“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.”
I think herein lies the problem. This child is the experiment, not part of an experiment, but is the actual experiment. Why else would you transplant a uterus to a woman who was born without one? It is not so she can menstruate for a few years. It is so she can gestate a baby. A baby that had his or her start in a laboratory not in a loving embrace.
The idea of a child as the experiment is not new. We have been experimenting with the next generation without their consent for a long time. We are still experimenting on them. The fact is we have no idea what the long-term physical and emotional effects of IVF, PGD, ICSI or other artificial reproductive technologies (ART) even are and yet we continue on. This uterus transplant is no different.
The avant-garde attitude toward the creation of children will continue on with the health and well-being of the children produced as an after-thought. Case in point, Dr. Robert Sparrow's paper "In vitro eugenics" in the Journal of Medical Ethics where he explores possibility of creating embryos in the lab, then using the stem cells from those embryos to create egg and sperm cells, and then using those gametes to create more embryos. Essentially, this would take human reproduction into the laboratory not just for one generation, but for generation after generation. These embryos would be "orphaned at conception." Unfortunately, this technology of producing egg and sperm from stem cells is no longer science fiction. Scientists have already accomplished this in mice and are discussing and developing strategies to doing the same in humans.
Sparrow points out that safety concerns for the children produced with "in vitro eugenics" will likely not prevent the practice because frankly we have had little concern for safety in any previous ART technique. Sparrow writes:
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.
I think we can add uterus transplant from a deceased donor to his list of techniques where we did not know the whether the technique was "safe" before we tried it.
Let me provide an alternative way to view children. A view where children are to be treated with the utmost respect, not just from birth, but from conception. A view of children as the beautiful fruit of the love between a husband and wife not as the product of technological intervention. Let me quote Donum Vitae:
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."
I think it time we listen to the wisdom of the Catholic Church on procreation. Otherwise "in vitro eugenics" may only be the first in the long line of unethical techniques that treat children as objects and not as the gifts that they truly are.
Fame Daddy, the company that says it was going to begin selling celebrity sperm to desperate couples, is a comedy hoax. YAAAYYY! Gotta love those Brits lampooning society's crass commercialization of procreation. From Time:
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.
It think it says a lot about how society views children that many of us, the British media and myself included, found this credible.
Here is a tongue-in-cheek commercial for Fame Daddy. (Did I mention how much I love British humour?)
The Church warned us if we separated procreation from the physical act of love between a husband and wife, children would become commodities, man-made objects to be ordered from a menu to satisfy the whim of the parents. As William E. May so eloquently wrote:
"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."
And here is yet another in a long line of "services" the fertility industry is willing to provide to make children even more a product to order to specifications. A company called Fame Daddy is poised to provide women with sperm from famous men at a premium price. From The Telegraph:
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.
Now Fame Daddy is not exactly up an running yet, so here is hoping this venture never gets off the ground. I am not normally one to hope that an entrepreneur fails, but when they say something like this, I can't help myself:
"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."
Evolutionary leap for women? Seriously? Ordering famous sperm from some celebrity chaser and raising a child to never know his or her father? I call that a step backward, not forward, for both her AND the child. And what happens when the child is not a rock star or star footballer or billionaire banker? Does mom get to sue for a "defective product"?Evolutionary leap indeed. Hat Tip:Matt Swaim
In everything there is the Hollywood version, and then there is the reality. Unfortunately these days no one seems to be able to tell the difference. Which is why I find NBC's "The New Normal" so disturbing.
"The New Normal" depicts a gay couple hiring a surrogate to carry a child for them. With lines sugar-coating the business transaction like, "A family is a family and love is love," and "[The surrogate's] just like an easy bake oven, except with no legal rights to the cupcake," the whole of America will be getting the warm-fuzzies just thinking about how great surrogacy is for everyone involved. The sweet, doe-eyed, single mother will get money to make her bio daughter's life better and the loving gay couple will get to shop for baby clothes. (I think I feel a tear coming on...never mind...something my kid threw just hit me in the eye.)
But in the Hollywood version there will be one voice missing. "The New Normal" will likely ignore the one voice that should be heard above all the others. The one voice that will tell you that "The New Normal" is far from normal and should never be considered normal. Continue reading at Creative Minority Report >>
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.
We have always known how important it was for our mother to eat healthy and live in a healthy environment. What epigenetics is telling us is that it was also important for our health that our grandmother did the same. Why? Because your mother's egg that was fertilized by your father's sperm began developing while your mother was in her mother's womb. So your grandmother's diet and environment likely influences your overall health today.
Scientists are discovering the same about the diet and environment of men, who naturally produce sperm their entire lives. The New York Times has a piece called "Why Fathers Really Matter" highlighting the importance of epigenetics and cleaning living for men:
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.
So parents, tell your sons to eat healthy, and stay away from drugs and excessive alcohol. The health of their children and grandchildren may depend on it. The article also has an interesting correlation between paternal age and autism and asks if the rise in autism cases is a direct result of the rise of older fathers.
But what is missing from the mainstream discussion of epigeneics is a closer look at IVF. Whether it is being conceived in a dish, or the egg and sperm used in the process, children conceived with IVF have been shown to have different patterns of gene expression that those conceived naturally. Some scientists speculate that these changes may put IVF children at greater risk of diabetes and obesity. And if epigenetic changes in sperm and egg can be passed on to future generations, then it is likely the epigenetic differences in IVF children are ones they will pass on to their children and grandchildren.
So IVF is not just about the child couples so desperately want to hold. In today's reproductive Brave New World, where natural biology is capriciously thrown overboard in favor of parental choice, the choices parents make in creating the next generation may be choices that extend to their grandchildren and great grandchildren.
Biological colonialism is on the rise. Rich couples from western nations hiring poor Indian women to be surrogates. It seems like a win-win. The infertile couple gets the child they so desperately want on the cheap and the surrogates make more money than they can hope to make in such a short time. But look closer and you find a disturbing western attitude that the poor, dark, and different women are not people, but vessels in which to grow the next generation; natural resources to be exploited to continue on the western blood line.
No where is this attitude more apparent that in this Daily Mail interview with a British woman Octavia who has hired a surrogate in India because commercial surrogacy is illegal in Britain.
They have to come here because sex selection using IVF and preimplantation genetic diagnosis is illegal where they live. It needs to be illegal in America as well. Here is why. The Telegraphreports:
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.
So Dr. Steinberg is tossing out girl embryos in favor of boys for his Asian clients 97% of the time. There is a war on women in the United States, it is just not the war that people think it is.
The first gay couple in the UK to be recognized as parents on a birth certificate have come to America to ensure they have a girl. Barrie and Tony Drewitt-Barlow went to a U.S. IVF clinic and have hired a surrogate mother at the cost of £65,000 to "balance" their family with another girl. They have to travel to the Brave New United States because, like in most sensible countries, the sex selection is illegal in the UK. From The Daily Mail:
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.
Personally, I think dressing your kids in lederhosen and a dirndl to recreate the Von Trapps in a family photo might just be considered child abuse.
The Church has always rejected surrogacy and for very good reason. It objectifies both the woman whose womb has been rented and the child for whom a contract has been made for delivery. Nowhere is this arrangement more exploitive than when rich westerners go to places like India and get a uterus on the cheap. Not only are the embryos sometimes shipped by FedEx overseas to be transferred to a woman the parents have never actually met, but the dangers to the surrogate are substantial. Because she is usually poor and "working" to help support her family by renting out her body, the contract she signs often places the health and well-being of the child above her own, something that would not happen with a Western surrogate.
The media often portray international surrogacy as a win-win for all involved and as empowering poor women. Those who have researched the practice know this is not the case. (I recommend Scott Carney's Red Market:On the Trail of the World's Organ Brokers, Bone Thieves, Blood Farmers, and Child Traffickers for a look into surrogacy and other body markets.) Finally someone is making sense regarding the need to protect poor women who are surrogates. Kishwar Desai writes in The Guardian:
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.
Of course the rich westerners rationalize all day long about how using these poor women to get the child they so desperately want is OK. This exchange between Megan, a woman who used an Indian surrogate and a donor egg to have a child of her choosing (I mean why not adopt? Seriously.) and Wesley J. Smith who argued that commercial surrogacy should be outlawed is a perfect example:
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.
Joe considers himself to be a sort of Superman, except instead of flying around saving lives, he travels the UK making lives. Joe is a free sperm donor — that is, he has sex with women free of charge in order to impregnate them. While the service may sound a bit unorthodox, Joe claims he’s conceived more than 30 offspring and is far from the only man to tap into this hot business.
Paul Knoepfler is a stem cell researcher in California. His work focuses on the reasons pluripotent stem cells (both induced and embryonic) form tumors. He is also a writer and a blogger which is unusual for a research scientist. 
The Church has always been against third-party reproduction and that is because the Church has always been focused on the needs of the child and not on the wants of the parents. 
