IVF: Enough Will Never Be Enough

March 16th, 2011
By Wesley J. Smith, J.D.

UK scientists announced that they will ask the rarely-says-no UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) for permission to implant an IVF embryo that is biologically related to three parents (two women and one man). The genetically modified embryo will be created by taking the mitochondrial DNA from a second (destroyed) embryo and replacing it for that of the first. The purpose is to prevent maternally passed genetic diseases. But health is always the justification for opening doors best kept closed. If it succeeds, the technology will not long remain limited to the few and far between. These things rarely do.

The three-parent child would not be possible without in vitro fertilization (IVF). IVF has unquestionably helped bring great joy to the barren and brought precious children into the world who otherwise would not exist. But that is far from the whole story. It has also unleashed a terrible hubris around human reproduction, mutating it into a form of manufacture, including such staples of industrialization as special orders for style, warehousing, quality control, harvesting natural resources to support the industry, and independent service contractors who facilitate productivity and efficiency.

The baby manufacturing industry also has an aggressive political lobbying arm, ever on the ready to castigate those who question the wisdom of the current laissez faire system as being cruelly insensitive to the pain of barren families. No wonder cowardly American politicians have yet to muster the true grit to enact even modest regulations.
the rest image

» The human egg has become, pound for pound, the most valuable commodity on the face of the earth, with eugenically desirable (beautiful, brilliant) women paid tens of thousands of dollars for twenty microscopic eggs. The health consequences to these women are potentially very serious, as vividly exposed in the award winning CBC documentary, Eggsploitation.

» Embryos are indeed discarded as medical waste, in Goodman’s words, as if they are "no more meaningful than a dish of caviar."

» Embryos are eugenically selected for implantation or discarding, with embryos not only selected out for health reasons, but also for superficial cosmetic purposes such as eye and hair color.

» Bioethicists and futurists look to the technology as a method to eventually "seize control of our own evolution" by genetically engineering our progeny, say, for greater intelligence.

» Hundreds of thousands of embryos have been stored and are now, with the advent of embryonic stem cell research, seen by biotechnological researchers as mere natural resources ripe for the harvest.

» Concomitantly, to further the objectification of human life, many bioethics and scientific groups have engaged in post-modern biological redefinitionism, for example, claiming that embryos only become real embryos after implantation. Before that, they are mere "balls of cells" that are no different from the cells we lose every morning when we brush our teeth...

Oxford ethicist: keep clever embryos, destroy the rest