New In-Vitro Concern: Contamination May Lead to Bacterial DNA “Embedded” in IVF Kids

Life Site News ^ | 01.03.06 | Terry Vanderheyden

[guinnessman]

Congratulations on your beautiful daughter.

My 5 year-old loves Thomas the Tank Engine as well. My wife and I, after eight years of marriage, were unable to have children. We went to a fertility clinic where the doctor prescribed fertility drugs for my wife, but it was obvious from day one that they were only really interested in doing IVF. When we explained that as Catholics, we firmly believed in the teaching of the Church that IVF is illicit, there were no longer interested in us as patients.

We finally turned to adoption, and now we have three beautiful children; a 5 year-old, a 2 year-old, and a 3 month-old; all through the miracle of adoption!

Might I humbly suggest that you look into adoption for a sibling for that beautiful child of yours?

[guinnessman]

Oops!

there were=they were

[tortoise]

When do you think life begins? At what stage does a human deserve protection?

False dichotomy. "life" is a continuum, as is "human". Pretending that one can quantize a continuum rarely generates good results around the arbitrary boundary.

[mikegi]

I do have some questions for you: What happened to the other fertilized babies in your 3rd attempt?

Only one of the remaining embryos progressed far enough to be frozen. We transferred it two years later but were unsuccessful.

When do you think life begins? At what stage does a human deserve protection?

Don't know exactly. Does life begin when a sperm cell fuses with an egg cell? Or later when the sperm and egg pronuclei fuse to produce a zygote with a unique set of chromosomes? Or later still when the zygote differentiates into a blastocyst? When do you think a human life begins?

[ukwildcats]

Please accept my apology for the vulgarity. However,I am far from "anti-Catholic". You see, Coleus and I have gone round and round at different times over this subject and I have seen his cut and paste method turn to nothing but intentionally hurting some with his words. My twin 3 year old boys are the product of IVF, which when Coleus gets done plagiarizing his arguments, is called by him at various times: "evil"........."barbaric" and the like.

Of course he falls back upon "all children are a blessing"........before castigating the procedure that got them here in reprehensible terms. And........he does so with a piousness that is insufferable to me. If you cannot tell from his posts Coleus passes judgement as if he sits at the right hand of our God.

Perhaps "Coleus the Pious" would be a better phrase.

Once again, my apologies...........but this is a subject that is inflammatory, period.

[pillut48]

(Also sent private reply)

Thank you for your kind words. :-)
I'm glad you found your family. :*)

Unfortunately, adoption isn't an option for us, but we were incredibly fortunate in that my husband worked for a very big company that covered ~99% of the costs of doing IVF--so that was the route we chose after many years.

I have lots of IF friends who also adopted and I agree, adoption is a miracle! :*) And so is IVF for those it works for, like us. :*)

[pillut48]

And how many of yours are frozen?

You call this moral and ethical. How so. How does one justify this? I'm willing to learn.

Why is the fertilization procedure in itself immoral? Doctors "create" multiple embryos at one time in order to increase the chances of success of implantation. Normally dozens of embryos are created and never used. These littlest human beings are then frozen or destroyed.

---

Again, opinions delivered as fact.

None of my embryos survived to be frozen (which happens a lot, I'm not the lone ranger) and all the ones that did were replaced in me. The ones that died naturally were reabsorbed by my body. The one that did not is now called Maya Grace.

I find nothing un-ethical about life and death. Life happens, death happens. IVF didn't destroy the embryos--it created them when my body couldn't. The doctors aren't pulling embryos out of thin air to "create" them--God has given us the ingredients, the doctor puts them together and replaces them and prays and hopes for the best, just like the patient.

Just because an embryo lives, does not guarantee it will continue to grow and become a person (although that is the prayer of IVFers, 'grow, embies, grow!')--just like any stage in life, life continues or life does not continue. When life does not continue naturally, it is not immoral or anything else, it just *is*.

I personally believe life begins at conception/fertilization, regardless of how many cells there are, and the embryo doesn't look like a baby. You present the position that ALL doctors and ALL infertility patients are out there in the world simply creating embryos to purposely murder them, and that's the wrong I am pointing out. I am Christian (Baptist), and I have many Catholic friends who have gone through the agony of trying to decide which yearning to follow--the Catholic Church's interpretation of God's will in their lives, or their own personal interpretation of God's will in their lives. Some choose adoption and have been successful (it's not a picnic, an easy going aspect either, and it usually costs much more than IVF) and others who have not been able to adopt and are still childless. :*( Still others have opposed their church
teachings and have gone on to do IVF and now have a family and STILL attend Catholic Church--it is very much a personal choice to decide what to do, as with anything. But the fact is what Coleus presented is filled with unsubstantiated so-called facts that are simply opinions--not necessarily truths. IVF patients do not walk into a doctor's office and ask, "How many embryos can we kill on purpose to get a child?" and my doctor (a Christian, as well, who has prayed for us and had tears in his eyes when he held Maya after she was born) was nothing but caring and never once did I see him do the Snidely Whiplash mustache twirl and rub his hands together with glee to see how many embryos we could make to destroy. He was very careful with monitoring everything, and there are many other doctors out there in the world just like him. Yes, there are those in the field out to make a buck, and yes, there are those who are not as careful with monitoring, and couples may wind up with many embryos (not the case for the majority of patients!) but not ALL of them and us are like that. That's what I'm saying.

And because God does the actual fertilizing, then I guess you must believe by your logic that *God* is the immoral one, because only HE can join sperm and egg together and bring it to life. The doctor can only put them together. So there's another problem for you to ponder.

[Nick5]

Tell this to my two nieces and nephew, triplets who turred 16 the day before yesterday. A joy to their parents and all who know them. My brother in law and his wife tried the old fashioned way for years and it is an incalculable blessing from God that my brother in law was able to commit the heinous sin of masturbation in order to have the three babies that have become three shining lights in the world. BTW, all observing Catholics, raised in Catholic schools all the way.

[pillut48]

I love happy endings. :*) (Times three)

[Coleus]

google is a great tool. I hope you now understand what you read and realize the horrors of IVF. IVF is a horrible sin, anything else?

Now go check my typos little one.

[diamond6]

bttt

[ukwildcats]

Congratulations on your little girl! My guys love Thomas the Tank Engine also.

As for Coleus the Pious.........what a surprise that he comes out with a pompous, snarky and condescending remark such as "little one"(in the message after yours). Rather than actually reply to your well thought out rebuttals to his cut and paste job he starts down the low road once again. Of course your points don't mesh with his "IVF is evil" box he has constructed in his mind.

Oh, well.

[Coleus]

BTW, all observing Catholics, raised in Catholic schools all the way. >>

looks as though the Catholic School and their priests did not educate them properly.

[Angry_White_Man_Syndrome]

I agree with you on this. Many here seem to brush aside the fact that the unwanted children are never given a chance. They are just but in the freezer and forgotten to later be destroyed. If people were so wanting for children, why don't they give all the embryos they have created a chance at life.

As far as saying sex during ovulation results in the loss of life, that is in God's hands. Not implanting every embryo created is the same as abortion.

[Nick5]

I'm scratching my head over you, sir (or ma'am). A family filled with joy and love, children raised to value generosity, compassion and God--and you just can't get out of the little box of self-important piety you've built around yourself. What a strange planet we live on.

[Coleus]

If people were so wanting for children, why don't they give all the embryos they have created a chance at life. >>

Or, whey didn't they just adopt one of the 400,000 frozen embryos/beautiful babies.

Judging from the comments on this and other threads, the parents have this false notion that they created NO excess embryos and that ALL were used at the time of injection. Either they don't want to know the truth or know the truth and think that by trying to forget what they did the problem will go away. They don't even see the problem that through this very unnatural act created 4 lives (as they say, however, if you read the facts on IVF many more than 4 embryo/beautiful children are created) , injected them knowing that some will be killed so that the one or two may live.

And as you also read on this and the other threads, they have NO remorse for the babies lost after injection and those still alive, 400,000 of them, on ice. It's a shame. As they say, satan is the master deceiver.

[MEGoody]

I got to wonder if some of these zealots propose holding funerals for used tampax.

Take a biology class.

Good grief.

[MEGoody]

My problem with IVF is the number of 'extra' embryoes that are created, then either stored away for an indefinite period of time, or destroyed (or stored, then destroyed).

If the parents do not what them implanted, why not donate those embryoes to other couples who want a child?

Those who 'ooooh' and 'aaaaah' over the child they allowed to live, and give no thought at all to the ones they allowed to be frozen indefinitely or destroyed show that their desire for a child was completely selfish. . .just another piece of 'stuff' to show off.

[Coleus]

and you just can't get out of the little box of self-important piety you've built around yourself. What a strange planet we live on. >>

 

It's non about me, it's about the thousands of the "disposable" children killed during this procedure and the other 400,000 left overs on ice.  It's not moral or natural, below is the catholic point of view.  I suggest you read it.

 

Many of the drugs used for in vitro fertilization (IVF) to overcome infertility put women's health and lives in jeopardy. Various drugs used to facilitate ovulation or regulate its timing have serious side effects. Thousands of women are taking these drugs annually, and many are unaware of the dangers they face.

Additionally, the risk for having a baby with birth defects is higher when children are conceived through IVF. Unfortunately, physicians are all too ready to turn to IVF as the means to address infertility. Women should be very cautious before taking this very serious step. Beyond the serious health risks posed by IVF, the procedure involves the killing of embryonic human beings in its attempts to create embryos suitable for implantation.

We need to be clear that the baby is not the problem. Babies are never problems, they are gifts. Rather, it is the procedure used to produce the baby that is the problem. Think of it: your children that were lucky enough to be born and to see the light of day were conceived in a Petri Dish!  And in case you are wondering: yes, God did give them a soul in the Petri dish. God's creative love is not limited by human immorality (the immorality of the doctors and couples who create many babies, grow one or two of the good embryos and "discarding" or throwing out the others like they were trash)   God just wishes that we would do it His way. In God's plan no human being should ever be created in a laboratory. He has given us the perfect environment in which to come into being; namely, marriage. The couples' cooperation in God's creative act is called "pro-creation" as if to emphasize that the one Creator has allowed human beings to participate in so sublime an act. The institution of marriage itself was intended by Him to be the perfect matrix of life, and all technological intrusion into this sacred space for reasons other than health is a sin.

 

Why is the fertilization procedure in itself immoral? Doctors "create" multiple embryos at one time in order to increase the chances of success of implantation. Normally dozens of embryos are created and never used.  And those that are used, 3-4 at a time, usually result in the death of the embryo/baby.  These littlest human beings are then frozen or destroyed. The success rate of the in vitro process is abysmally low: only 4 percent of all the embryos created ever see the light of day as a newborn baby. Human beings, no matter how small, should never be the subject of sloppy high school science projects.

Even when a child often does result from an IVF procedure, the travesty of having to create, freeze or destroy so many of that baby's brothers and sisters, your other children, your family,  is morally reprehensible.

 

One baby created at the expense of dozens of others is a macabre tradeoff. We must stand squarely on the side of the dignity of the human person, and we can be grateful that the many God-fearing Christians and other Church denominations do not hesitate to speak out-oftentimes in the face of fierce criticism, as you are doing in this thread,  in defense of the innocent from unprincipled actions.

The immorality of the IVF procedure consists primarily in the destruction of the multiple extra embryos that are created in a laboratory along with the one or two that successfully come to birth.  The moral principle violated by this procedure is the most fundamental of all moral tenets: one can never do an evil in order that good may come of it. Here, the sacrifice of the 24 babies in order to get one or two to grow into healthy children is so wrong that it overrides the infertile couple's right to have a child.

 

The worst effect of IVF, however, is its power to strip the embryonic child of dignity under the guise of really wanting children. If we do not recognize the intrinsic dignity of that several-cell human being, then we erode the very principle whereby we fight for the dignity of every other human being, born or unborn. This recognition of human dignity is what makes us so firm in our defense of the poor, the enslaved, the handicapped, the elderly, the unborn and the embryo. All are equal in dignity simply because all were created in the image and likeness of God.

The more our culture blindly accepts killing, organ harvesting and treating other human beings as mere property, the further we slide into moral relativism, which I stated in a previous post to you, and it will be very difficult for us as a Christian, civilized nation, some day to make the argument that our own killers should respect our human dignity. IVF manipulates, destroys and dehumanizes the tiniest human beings and should be opposed on principle.

 

Stepping away from God’s law always introduces chaos into our lives. Nowhere is this truer than in the case of in vitro fertilization. The reproductive revolution has had the ability to separate genetic parenting from gestational parenting and from social parenting; and the agent who brings it all about, a biotechnician, will be still another person.

 

Marriage and its indissoluble unity are the only venue worthy of truly responsible procreation. Accordingly, any conception engineered with semen or ova donated by a third party would be opposed to the exclusivity that is demanded of a married couple. Such a procedure would be a violation of the bond of conjugal fidelity. It is also an anomaly for a donor to contribute to the conception of a child with the express intention of having nothing to do with that child’s upbringing.

 

“I formed you in the womb, I knew you and before you were born, I consecrated you” (Jer 1:5).

 

Human life is precious from the moment of conception; but, sadly enough, the biblical respect for human life is being eroded in our contemporary society. Without a deep reverence for the sacredness of human life, humanity places itself on the path of self-destruction.

When science and technology open doors that should not be opened, a Pandora’s box spews forth evils that menace humanity.  Scientists have opened a perilous door: they are manufacturing human life and using their product as an object of experimentation.

Science without the compass of ethical restraints is taking us on a path towards dehumanization in the name of progress. Modern scientific advances have so much to offer, but they must be guided by ethical principles which respect the inherent dignity of every human being. When science embarks on a Promethean quest, fueled by greed and commercialization, our own humanity is placed at risk.

In the IFV procedure,  a woman is given fertility drugs to ensure that she produces several ova which are collected to be fertilized in a petri dish creating several embryos. The healthiest ones are chosen for transfer to the woman’s womb. Many embryos are discarded or frozen. Freezing kills some more. Some embryos are later used for experimentation, which is always lethal.

Recent estimates project that there are 400,000 frozen embryos in the United States laboratories. These embryos are human lives that, given the chance to grow, would develop into a man or a woman. The fate and disposition of these embryos represents a serious moral dilemma which has contributed to a coarsening of the public’s attitude towards the sacredness of human life.

During recent debates before Congress, a couple gave compelling testimony against embryonic stem cell research. The main arguments that they presented were their two young sons who had been frozen embryos that the husband and his wife adopted. We cannot pretend that these embryos are tadpoles. They are human beings with their unique genetic code, full complement of chromosomes, and individual characteristics already in place. Every person alive today started out as an embryo.  These early-stage abortions are not morally acceptable.  Unfortunately, many people of good will have no notion of what is at stake and simply focus on the baby that results from in vitro fertilization, not adverting to the fact that the procedure involves creating many embryos, most of which will never be born because they will be frozen or discarded.

We do not have a “right to have a child.” Such a right would be “contrary to the child’s dignity and nature. The child is not an object to which one has a right, nor can he be considered 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. For this reason the child has the right to be the fruit of the specific act of conjugal love of his parents; and the child also has the right to be respected as a person from the moment of his conception”

For us, marriage and motherhood and fatherhood is a vocation, and children are a gift. However, even when procreation is not possible, married life does not for that reason lose its value. 

[Coleus]

My problem with IVF is the number of 'extra' embryos that are created, then either stored away for an indefinite period of time, or destroyed (or stored, then destroyed).
If the parents do not what them implanted, why not donate those embryos to other couples who want a child? >>>

that's the problem, those left over and those killed after injected into the mother. We all know that the 3-4 injected usually do not survive, there is no moral or natural rationale for that process.

also, many are under the false impression that only 4 embryos/babies are created. No, that's not how it works, if it did work that way, we here in the USA wouldn't have 400,000 children on ice. or have articles such as this one where the fertility clinics don't know what to do with all the left over babies created in test tubes and petri dishes.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1513817/posts