Couples Cull Embryos to Halt Heritage of Cancer

NY Times ^ | 09.03.06 | AMY HARMON

[jwalsh07]

Here's the thing: an embryo in a test tube or a perti dish is *not* viable.

Perhaps to an alchemist. Like you.

[The Cuban]

Distinction without a difference alert.

[usafsk]

So what's your stand on capital punishment? Just wondering.

[little jeremiah]

It's only eight cells in a petri dish. It's only a small "fetus" (ie unborn human baby). It's only a defective baby who won't live anyway. It's only a sick child who will have no quality of life. It's only a mentally ill person who has no enjoyment of life. It's only a retarded person who can't care for himself. It's only an elderly person who has no future ahead anyway. It's only a sick elderly person who can't care for herself.

It's only a Jew. It's only a Christian. It's only a native. It's only a (fill in the blank).

[jas3]

>> 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.

I wonder where the notion that the soul is created as soon as an egg is fertilized comes from. An embryo which is only an 8 cell blastosphere still has the potential to split into identical twins. So where does the extra soul come from? Did God place two souls in the single blastosphere knowing that it was going to split later? Or does he add the second soul after the blastosphere splits in two? Or does he not add any souls until later in fetal development? Or maybe identical twins (but not fraternal twins) share a single soul?

Many pregnancies start out with dual embryos, but one of them vanishes very early on. What happens to the vanished twin's soul in that case? Do the vanished twins have a soul that goes to heaven (even if it is unbaptised)? Or does it go to limbo? Or is a vanished twin just a collection of cells waiting to get a soul at a later date?

Since as many as 1 in 8 pregnancies start out with dual embryos, if the vanished embryos all go up to heaven, then as many as 12.5% of souls in heaven would be people who never made is out of the few hundred cell stage. I wonder what it would be like to meet one of these souls in heaven considering their only worldly experiences were a few weeks as a few hundred cells prior to having developed any nervous system.

jas3

[marsh_of_mists]

Wow, that's perfect.

[usafsk]

Trite and ineffective line of reasoning. Do you think that a soul inhabits an embryo before implantation, before self-awareness, at conception? If so, what harm comes to the soul by the embryo simply not implanting, the cells dying a natural death? The soul moves on, the human doesn't suffer.

What is your position on what is a soul, how it comes into being, how it leaves the body, etc. And where are you getting this info? Rome?

[usafsk]

That's the question the anti-birth control crowd hates to answer. Their reasoning starts to unravel, entwining itself with poorly reasoned theology with little Biblical basis. If you keep poking them, they'll swarm from the hive!

[MichiganConservative]

I don't base by thoughts on birth control or fertility medicine on when a soul inhabits a body. I find it amusing that one of the people who really liked and popularized this soul argument was Bill Clinton when justifying his veto of the partial-birth abortion ban.

[orionblamblam]

>> Here's the thing: an embryo in a test tube or a perti dish is *not* viable.

> Perhaps to an alchemist. Like you.

Ah. The Lame Ad Hominem. The sure sign of someone lacking a rational arguement.

Tell you what, Ace: point me towards evidence of an embryo fertilized in a petri dish or test tube and *raised* in said bit of glass and finally decanted a full-fledged live baby. I'll wait.

Remember, the embryo has to be brought to term in that hunk of glass. Not implanted in a womb, since that is an act of a human "playing God."

[orionblamblam]

>> The decision is not to render it unviable, but to fail to render it viable.

> Distinction without a difference

You honestly think that? Then by that reasoning, your failure to volunteer to have these embryos implanted within yourself amounts to a willingness on your part to commit multiple and unceasing acts of murder.

[NYer]

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.

Slippery slope, indeed. Chloe did not harbor the colon cancer gene, so she is allowed to be born. When Chloe reaches puberty, she may very well develop AIDS or leukemia or breast cancer .. or ... she may end up like the 20 year old son of a friend, dead, from a head on collision.

Yes, the new age process of selective breeding resolves one problem. Who knows what magnificent contributions to medicine her 'siblings' might have contributed, had they been allowed the same lease on life.

Can you just imagine the parents telling Chloe how special she is! It's no longer the stork story but "we chose you" over the other fertilized embryos because you didn't carry the colon cancer gene.

Catholic Ping List
Please freepmail me if you want on/off this list

[MichiganConservative]

...your failure to volunteer to have the...

Mother Theresa actually did volunteer to take the unwanted ones. No one took her up on it, though.

[jas3]

I don't base by thoughts on birth control or fertility medicine on when a soul inhabits a body. I find it amusing that one of the people who really liked and popularized this soul argument was Bill Clinton when justifying his veto of the partial-birth abortion ban.

I find it irrelevant what Bill Clinton has ever thought about anything. The proper way to analyze a problem is NOT to find out what Bill Clinton thought about it and to take the opposite position.

So if you don't base your thoughts on birth control or fertility medicine on when a soul inhabits a body, then on what moral basis can you oppose the destruction of an 8 celled blastosphere. Either it has a soul, and the destruction of it is wrong (and you should then answer my questions above to defend that position), or it doesn't have a soul, and destruction of it is morally inconsequential.

So which is it?

I absolutely can see how vacuuming a living 6 month old healthy fetus (with a developed nervous system and which can experience pain) from a woman's womb is morally different from a woman chosing from which of several batches of cells she wants to bring a baby into the world. Can you?

jas3

[M. Dodge Thomas]

We are witnessing the very early stages of the what will be a dramatically increasing difference between children created "on purpose" and children created "by accident".

Like it or not, within two generations it will be the minority of highly "imperfect" naturals who are regarded with pity by everyone else.

[NYer]

I'm pro-life and see nothing wrong with what they did.

You can't be pro-life while supporting the act of destroying living embryos. Life begins at conception, and it must be protected.

[MichiganConservative]

...or it doesn't have a soul, and destruction of it is morally inconsequential.

Gee, thanks for the false dilemma. I said earlier that I base my arguments on my study of human development and embryology and the premise that murdering humans is wrong.

So maybe you believe murdering humans is ok in some cases, such as when they're realy small.

[MichiganConservative]

Like it or not, within two generations it will be the minority of highly "imperfect" naturals who are regarded with pity by everyone else.

And probably within two generations, this will be a moot argument as we're having our heads cut off.

[jas3]

Slippery slope, indeed. Chloe did not harbor the colon cancer gene, so she is allowed to be born. When Chloe reaches puberty, she may very well develop AIDS or leukemia or breast cancer .. or ... she may end up like the 20 year old son of a friend, dead, from a head on collision.

Chloe's eventual outcome is irrelevant to the discussion about whether her parents have the moral authority to decide whether she should be allowed to be born free of this particular genetic defect.

Yes, the new age process of selective breeding resolves one problem. Who knows what magnificent contributions to medicine her 'siblings' might have contributed, had they been allowed the same lease on life.

Humans have been practicing selective breeding ever since there were humans. It is not a new age process at all. Again you raise an irrelevant point. It is not relevant what contributions any unimplanted blastosphere's might have made to society if they had been born. Chloe's parents were only going to have ONE child. You might just as well lament the fact that the several million of Chloe's father's sperm all swam to no end and died. Think of the millions of souls that could have been great musicians or dancers or mathematicians!

Can you just imagine the parents telling Chloe how special she is! It's no longer the stork story but "we chose you" over the other fertilized embryos because you didn't carry the colon cancer gene.

Generally people don't discuss these decisions with their children any more than a mother would tell her child how lucky a she is that the the egg that was fertilized by the father wasn't fertilized by another man.

And I suspect this child will be very thankful to her parents that she will not have to spend the first few decades of her life knowing that she will eventually die of cancer at a young age.

jas3

[It's me]

I understand all the arguments and you have no right to tell me what I am and am not.

Well, sure he (or she) does. In his opinion you are not pro-life. Actually, in many people's opinion, you are not pro-life.

Just because you don't believe life begins at conception but begins at implantation, does not make it so.

You have a case of relativism. Your "truth" is relative to what you seem to believe.

What were those eight cells in the petri dish eventually going to be?