Couples Cull Embryos to Halt Heritage of Cancer

NY Times ^ | 09.03.06 | AMY HARMON

[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.

[free_at_jsl.com]

I don't claim to have any answers here... I only have my own opinions and I know where I got them. I would be very interested in opinions from everyone else with regard to the question posed in post #29. Sperm are alive as well as eggs. When fertilization occurs, those two separate lives merge into a new one. Where should the protection begin? What kind of protections are we talking about? How can the rights of all of those involved be protected without infringing anybody's rights? These are tough questions.

[The Cuban]

I have psoriasis, I really wish my parents had aborted me, I mean, come on, I have to make sure I moisturize every-day, the HORROR! /sarcasm off.

[The Cuban]

Yes, because you don't have a right to kill someone, even if they die a "horrible" death of cancer. It is God's right to give and take life, not yours.

[orionblamblam]

> I do not believe that just because someone may die of cancer someday is a good reason to prevent them from reaching that stage.

OK, so you would prefer to have kids that would die horribly of ass-cancer, rather than kids that wouldn't... because that's what you're suggesting here.

Left to nature, these parents would have kids who would carry a Horrible Gene. But thanks to medical science, these parents can still have kids, just kids without the Horrible Gene. Is it some great tragedy that the kids with the Horrible Gene won't get born? Won't, in fact, get implanted? No more so than it's a great tragedy that any particular egg fails to fertilize or a fertilized egg gets spontaneously aborted. There are great tragedies enough in life to get all emo about a few non-implanted cells.

[The Cuban]

Human Life begins at conception. I have never had a beer with a zygote.

[orionblamblam]

> It is God's right to give and take life

Then it is God's responsibility to take care of the cell in the petri dish, ain't it.

[orionblamblam]

> What's your plan?

Something to do with stem cells.

[The Cuban]

No, it is the person who made the embryo in the petri dish's duty to take care of it, i.e. the parents.

[TheDon]

You can dress eugenics up all you want, it is still murder.

[MichiganConservative]

From the article:

killing his mother, her father and her two brothers,

Maybe the mother and father were young breeders? These aren't children (under 18) dying. They were adults well into reproductive age as they had their own kids. But, I guess living to 45, 60, 70 isn't worth it if you die of ass cancer. Better to die of alzheimers at 90 or congestive heart failure at 55 or something else. What the hell do people think "dying of old age" means? People are going to die someday from some thing. (Unless, of course, you're orionblamblam and have a Secret Plan.)

And if you've been paying attention, the birth rate in the West, including the US, has been falling for years. The population has only been stable because of immigration. When the Muslims move in and take over you just might be an annoying old white guy they'd rather be without. So much for that living forever.

[orionblamblam]

> it is the person who made the embryo in the petri dish's duty to take care of it, i.e. the parents.

And, apparently, they do. They take care of it by incinerating it, *long* before it develops a nervous system.

Here's the thing: an embryo in a test tube or a perti dish is *not* viable. What makes that cell viable is human choice and medical technology. Such an embryo CANNOT survive, unless it is implanted in a womb. A decision to not save an unviable embryo... doesn't sound like murder to me. Taking a functional embryo *out* of a womb and killing it... that's clearly different.

[The Cuban]

An embryo is a life, viable or not. A decision to render it unviable by not implanting it is murder.

[jas3]

I'm wondering how you would feel if the embryos in question were not destroyed but were also not implanted.

Some people on this thread believe that the 8 celled embryos have a soul and therefore cannot not be destroyed without moral consequence. But not destroying them does not require that they also be implanted.

Suppose the parents in this case simply chose to allow the seven remaining cells in the blastospheres with severe genetic problems to live until they died a natural death over a period of days, weeks, years, decades, or whatever time period that might be. In this scenario the parents take no active steps to harm these seven cells.

When the last of the seven cells dies naturally, the soul would presumably move on the same as any other soul departing a fully grown person, correct? And the parents and medical establishment will have avoided the murder of an innocent unborn, correct?

Or does the mere creation of a blastosphere morally require implantation to avoid being deemed a murderer?

jas3

[orionblamblam]

> These aren't children (under 18) dying.

Correct. But then, if they had been replaced at conception by some other embryo, then chances are quite high that they would have lived much longer than they did.

[skr]

Embryos, even unimplanted ones, are not on the same level as fingernail clippings. These people are judging that their own children who have a defective gene don't deserve to live-- never mind that a defective gene does not necessarily guarantee a specific unhealthy outcome.

[MichiganConservative]

Correct. But then, if they had been replaced at conception by some other embryo, then chances are quite high that they would have lived much longer than they did.

If the embryos with the bad genes had been replaced by others, the ones with the bad genes would probably have been destroyed and not lived past that. The other ones would have progressed.

[orionblamblam]

> A decision to render it unviable by not implanting it is murder.

Incorrect. The decision is not to render it unviable, but to fail to render it viable. There's a fundamental difference.

[orionblamblam]

> These people are judging that their own children who have a defective gene don't deserve to live

Not quite. These people are judging that cells that do not have the genetic disorder have the greater right to *become* children.

[orionblamblam]

> Some people on this thread believe that the 8 celled embryos have a soul and therefore cannot not be destroyed without moral consequence.

Yet I don't see them lining up for implantation.

[cryptical]

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.

If science were on their side, they wouldn't need superstition.