Jan's Stinkin Blog: NOBEL PRIZE: For In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF)...good or bad?

Another topic I wanted to touch on concerned the NOBEL PRIZE being awarded to biologist Robert Edwards, who perfected in-vitro fertilization (IVF) in the 1980s which resulted in over 4 million children being born through IVF worldwide.

I have known a few (actually many) couples who could not conceive for one reason or another, and turned to IVF; it worked for some and others finally turned to adoption.

Originally, I thought Mother Nature either allowed couples to conceive or not and if not, adoption was the only option left and I thought one should not tamper with what Mother Nature has decided.

As I learned more about the causes of infertility and why some men’s egos would never allow for adoption, I began to see where Mother Nature may need a helping hand from medical science.

At the outset, I questioned the use of IVF of embryos not from the biological parents, i.e. the egg and sperm of others. I can see where either an egg or the sperm of a biological parent is used but to not use either seems a little strange to me; why not adopt – it would be the same. I guess some women want to go through the birth experience even if it is not her egg or her husband’s sperm. Lesbians use their own eggs with sperm from a donor as do women that want a child but do not want to get married. Things are changing in our society, I guess…

Anyway, my main point is that as soon as the Nobel Prize for biology was awarded to Dr. Edwards, the

Vatican

came out against it as “completely out of order”. This was expected even though the Vatican must be aware that many Catholic couples have borne children using this method.

The objection is again the “embryos”; the ones not used and discarded and the ones left over and used for stem cell research and the fact that “man” is playing God.

I have studied a variety of opinions on this issue mainly from Catholics like “Catholics for Free Choice” and others and I also have stuck to my own reasoning on the subject.

I still maintain that sperm and ova are products of humans as part of our method of procreation. A husband and wife produce embryos and those embryos are their property to do with as they choose. The same goes for sperm donors as well as egg donors.

As for embryos, yes they are potential human beings but are very far from being a human being. To treat embryos as human beings is just absurd.

As far as playing God, there are a number of ways to look at that question. Since no one, including the

Vatican

, knows what God wants, doesn’t want or is thinking, the question is rendered moot.

Religion, being a human construct, can pretend to know what God wants and make rules accordingly; this is what the Vatican does. The reality of this position is that they as humans make the rules and not some deity but common sense tells us that humans that actually create families and raise children are better suited to make the rules than some old, celibate guys that have absolutely no experience in the real world of procreation.

I will agree with the

Vatican

and other concerned groups that there should be limits placed on IVF. Currently, physicians implant many embryos in the female with the hope that one or more will actually take and result in a viable child. In some cases, all the implanted embryos take and if the mother does not want to abort some of them, all are born and with that many children born at the same time, some if not all will be damaged in some way.

I still remember that idiot in California and her idiot doctor that allowed eight babies to be born knowing full well there was no husband and no means of supporting those eight children. For a doctor to be complicit in such an act, calls for an immediate license suspension.

Just recently, scientists have discovered how to choose the embryo that has the best chance of surviving to term in the womb. They discovered that the embryo that divides the earliest is the most viable and all you have to do is take pictures of the embryos to show which divides earliest. In this way, doctors will not have to implant many embryos but hopefully just one.

As for biologist Dr. Robert Edwards, shown in pictures with the first so called test-tube baby, the world owes him many thanks for not only did he enable many infertile couples to experience parenthood but his work enabled stem cell research which will, I firmly believe, eradicate devastating disease states that afflict many of us and prohibit us from living fulfilling lives to ripe old ages.