Posted on 09/03/2006 1:55:46 PM PDT by Coleus
As Chad Kingsbury watches his daughter playing in the sandbox behind their suburban Chicago house, the thought that has flashed through his mind a million times in her two years of life comes again: Chloe will never be sick.
Not, at least, with the inherited form of colon cancer that has devastated his family, killing his mother, her father and her two brothers, and that he too may face because of a genetic mutation that makes him unusually susceptible.
By subjecting Chloe to a genetic test when she was an eight-cell embryo in a petri dish, Mr. Kingsbury and his wife, Colby, were able to determine that she did not harbor the defective gene. That was the reason they selected her, from among the other embryos they had conceived through elective in vitro fertilization, to implant in her mother’s uterus.
Prospective parents have been using the procedure, known as preimplantation genetic diagnosis, or P.G.D., for more than a decade to screen for genes certain to cause childhood diseases that are severe and largely untreatable.
Now a growing number of couples like the Kingsburys are crossing a new threshold for parental intervention in the genetic makeup of their offspring: They are using P.G.D. to detect a predisposition to cancers that may or may not develop later in life, and are often treatable if they do.
For most parents who have used preimplantation diagnosis, the burden of playing God has been trumped by the near certainty that diseases like cystic fibrosis and sickle cell anemia will afflict the children who carry the genetic mutation that causes them.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Hildy, you forgot to say how glad you are that all those nasty embryos were killed good and dead, just like Terry Schiavo. (Oh, and tell us you're pro-life too.)
Maybe the problem is that we let them be in the petri dish at all. I know that is not what people want to hear. But one wrong may not justify leading to another wrong. Just something to ponder.
In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too
From the bottom of a long glass tube
-Zager & Evans, "In The Year 2525"
Ha. I don't believe there have been any clones.
My fingernails do not have a soul.
> They choose the kids they want, and kills those that they don't.
The number of children produced, however, remains more or less constant. Whether embryos composed only of a few cells can be considered "kids" is something that can be reasonable and rationally debated.
The other side of the coin, using the same rhetoric you seem to be using, is this: "So you *want* children to die horribly of cancer."
ping
> Life begins at conception.
Life beings *before* conception. Sperm and eggs are alive, after all. The question is not when does "life" begins (about 2 billion years ago...) but when "human life worthy of legal protection" begins.
> My fingernails do not have a soul.
Does an embryo?
If you wish to base laws on such a belief, stand ready to demonstrate the factual nature of your belief, in objective, reproducible scientific terms.
Yes, I just love death..I'm wearing my black robe right now. You're an idiot.
Since we are all going to die someday, having any kids means you want more people to die.
Not really. It's the same baby, just at a different time in it's development. Why should age be the determining factor in whether it's OK to end a life or not? It's murder when it's any other stage of someone's existance. When age is the determining factor in deciding someone's humanness, the slippery slope has begun, like it is now.
> Since we are all going to die someday
Speak for yourself. I plan to live forever.
Just for the record, I disagree with you based on my study of human development and embryology. Post #32 was sarcasm. I am unsure if your post is sarcasm as well.
I do not believe that just because someone may die of cancer someday is a good reason to prevent them from reaching that stage.
I think this practice of screening embryos is just to ease the minds of parents who just couldn't stand the thought that "their perfect baby" could have a genetic "defect".
People need to grow up. Maybe their "perfect" baby will become an alcoholic.
Are you planning on downloading your consciousness into a computer? What's your plan?
I think I am going to be ill. Crohn's, anyone? ADHD?
The Nazi's called it "Lebensunwertsleben," the life not worth living.
Conception = Conception, not conceived in a womb, not conceived while wanted, etc.
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