Posted on 09/03/2012 3:33:38 PM PDT by NYer
Good grief: A sperm bank is bragging that it set the record of having children born with 40 year-old sperm.
From the press release, headlined “World Record Shattered:”
Late in August, twin girls were born to a couple who used in vitro fertilization (IVF) to achieve pregnancy. On the surface, this may look like just another of the increasingly common success stories for the IVF industry. But this story has its own unique twist that makes it different from every other IVF pregnancy—the sperm used to fertilize the egg was frozen over 40 years ago, shattering the existing record of 28 years for a successful live birth through cryopreserved sperm.
Then, the self interest of the donor:
In 1971, a Japanese American war hero banked his sperm with a sperm bank where Russ Bierbaum, a young pioneer in reproductive tissue cryopreservation, was the acting laboratory technician. The war hero was the “first born” of a proud Japanese family whose culture dictates the family blood line be carried on through the first born son. Shortly after learning he and his wife would never have children of their own, he discovered none of his siblings were going to be able to preserve the family blood line either. That’s when he started the journey to maintaining his heritage through a surrogate.
Having banked his sperm, he contacted a surrogate agency to find a mother for the child who would save his family’s blood line. In the years that followed, the dream faded—surrogates were hard to find and the few who were willing were unable to achieve successful pregnancies. Yet his hope remained undeterred; as a successful American businessman, he continued to put money into a trust that would one day provide for the child he remained committed to fathering. Ultimately, Family Formation Law Offices of Michelsen and Cohen were able to connect him with a couple who was seeking pregnancy through donor sperm and was eager to become part of a much greater story. In late fall of 2011, a successful pregnancy was announced, followed nearly nine months later with the birth of twin girls.
So, the parents wanted to be part of a “greater story.” This tells us much of what is wrong with our current culture.
Worse, this amounts to unethical human experimentation. Who knows what 40 years in the deep freeze could do to the fertilizing cells, and what potential impact such long term cold storage could potentially have on the health of children? Moreover, is this any way to make children? To set records so a man can fulfill his dream of passing his genes down the generations?
But now oncologists are supposed to push the idea for their cancer patients:
This proves that a young male can effectively store semen and confidently use it 20, 30, or 40 years later to start a family,” said Bierbaum. “We’re hoping this kind of news will convince oncology professionals to be more proactive about discussing future fertility with their patients and begin the necessary steps to assure that their patients have been informed.”
I don’t think adding even more consumerist agendas to reproduction is a good thing at all.
LifeNews.com Note: Wesley J. Smith, J.D., is a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture. He writes at his blog, Secondhand Smoke.
Resorting to posting membership dates? Tsk-tsk.
So there were two daughters? Hah! The old coot got burned by his Faustian bargain?
>>Resorting to posting membership dates? Tsk-tsk.<<
Absolutely. I am more likely to forgive a newbie for not understanding the ideas of a site than a poster who has been here as long as you and I have.
I generally look at the sign in date. If they are not name calling, I will be kind and remind them where they are.
Name callers get less *ahem* kindness, as they have already crossed the line.
We have sign in dates available here if to help those who need it.
Nothing he wrote is worthy of a hysterical personal attack. Besides, in what insane universe is someone who has been here for two and a half years a “noob”? Is Free Republic a union shop where the value of a poster is determined by seniority? Ten years, ten days, who cares?
Technology needs to be improved to stop the creation of extra embryos. One couple one embryo. If that can be done, I see nothing wrong with babies being born to couples who would not be able to do so otherwise. The world needs more children, and I am sympathetic for couples that can’t have kids through no fault of their own.
Lots of circumstances ---other than marital intercourse ---can result in a baby: forcible rape, reproductive concubinage, surrogacy, youthful love affair, prostitution, baby-selling schemes, random promiscuous hook-up, lab experiments, incest, cloning, slave-breeding.
Everyone should agree that every one of these babies is "worthy of life" because any human being has a right to simply go on living. But everybody SHOULD also agree that least some of the ways on that list are wrong, and some are "wronger" than others.
It's not a reflection on the worth of the child. It's a reflection on the right of a child to be brought into existence in a way that reflects his dignity, that reflects what he is: essentially, a unique, loved, begotten child of a man and woman committed to his wellbeing and nurture, the fruit of the honorable and loving marital embrace.
Anything less than that, insults the child by making him a a commodity, a lab experiment, a product of violation, the object of a commercial transaction, a contraceptive failure, a mistake, an expensive pedigreed pet, something illegitimate, something unnatural--- something less than what he had a right to be.
This also opening the floodgates to lesbian couples, and gay-male couples, ordering up sperm, eggs, embryos, surrogates, etc. and deliberately concocting children alienated in every way, by intent, from either their genetic father, or their genetic mother, or their birthgiving mother, their natural siblings, their entire network of natural kin, or all of the above.
Gay guys from the USA and Europe are already doing reproductive tourism in India, hiring women to fabricate a pregnancy with an egg from here and a sperm from there and a contract to make sure she hands it over as specified, and a technician and an abortionist for quality control.
That's the inevitable destiny of these technologies.
Child = commodity.
Bad idea.
” Besides, in what insane universe is someone who has been here for two and a half years a “noob”? ... Ten years, ten days, who cares?”
“Noobieness” is more a relative thing. If you have a sign in date 2.5 years old, and are arguing with someone with a ten year old sign up date then yes, you are the “newb”.
And forget ever being equal to those freepers with a 1998 0r 1999 date. “The class of 98 (or 99)” trumps all.
My sign up is over 10 years old, but I will forever be a “newbie” to those guys.
So yeah, you can indeed be a “newbie” after 2.5 years.
40 year old sperm? What’s wrong with a kid born with a mullet, who’s first words are “FREEBIRD!”
Yeah, what a bunch-a NOOBs.
>>Nothing he wrote is worthy of a hysterical personal attack.<<
Hysterical personal attack? *snicker* Apparently, no one gave you the talk about “putting on your flame suit” while here. You haven’t SEEN the real “personal attacks” here.
But calling Pro-Life people Luddites is nothing, right?
Luddite = dog-whistle?
>> Besides, in what insane universe is someone who has been here for two and a half years a “noob”? <<
Well not to you.
BurningOak
Since Jan 5, 2012
>>Technology needs to be improved to stop the creation of extra embryos. <<
Absolutely! You would see the protests grind to a complete halt should that happen. None of us are Anti-Child. But all of us are Pro-Life. All life. Even the tiniest. Even the Snowflakes.
I’m a newbie to you!
Yawn.
Read BurningOak’s post.
>>Yawn.<<
I can see that you’re tired and not thinking clearly.
Take a nap, get your head in order and then we can hold a real adult conversation without your name calling.
Night!
Thanks, and the same to you too!
A good night’s sleep will also help you in recalling who was calling whom names here, in the first place.
Then, read through the comment regarding patients being treated for cancer (I mentioned the other poster who had commented about it) and maybe, just maybe you can indulge yourself in something amounting to a little more than the rambling prattle that you’ve produced so far.
- sent from Denver Airport.
Ditto that. The prolife objections to unnatural conception technologies have two grounds, neither of which is the legitimacy of the live of the child, no matter how they came to be. Once conceived, always received.
But that does not exonerate the method of conception. The first and most immediate objection is collateral damage to innocent human life. These throwaway byproduct children are still full, living humans, with all the rights, dignity, and respect accompanying that status. Sacrificing one human life for another is divine, if it is a voluntary sacrifice. But involuntary human sacrifice, no matter how noble the intent, no matter how sophisticated the technology, is nothing but raw, evil, barbarism.
The second ground looks farther into the future and asks, what will be the long term consequences of devaluing any innocent human life. The proliferation of reproductive technologies renders, by logic, all human life more expendable, because whatever we can mass produce, no matter the motive, comes to be viewed as inherently replaceable, an object created for the pleasure of another. Markets automatically form around commodities. Human life, bought and sold, like corn or pigs. Do we want that for ourselves?
Francis Schaeffer warned us about the temptation to do whatever we had the power to do. Morality, by design, puts voluntary restraints on possible actions, so that the world will be a place worth living in. We can kill, but we don’t, and everyone is better for it. God gave us morality to make us better, happier people, people who could enjoy a relationship of love with Him. If we set aside all moral boundaries, and only ask the mechanical question, what is technically possible, we may gain that “brave new world” of the futurists’ dreams, but we will certainly lose our human soul in the process.
Well said, Springfield Reformer.
The question I posed was not whether or not the Japanese man chose to use the 40-year old sperm; but whether or not it was necessary - NECESSARY - to fulfill his goal of fathering his own progeny. Nothing in the article says it was necessary.
As to his current sperm, at his age, being less viable than his frozen sperm - current in-vitro fertilization clinics are already expert at analyzing and selecting the most viable sperm sample from the material the man provides.
No. The choice for the 40-year-old sperm was not about simply assuring he had his own descendents; it WAS, primarily I imagine, about being part of a larger story.
I wouldn’t say that this has anything to do with “our culture” at all. The dude is said to be Japanese American but I’ll but he was more Japanese in his out look than anything else.
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