Medical professionals today can screen for certain genetic traits (genetic diseases and sex) with in vitro fertilization and preimplantation genetic diagnosis to obtain a healthy child, and reproductive technology continues to improve. With this in mind, the question arises whether sex selection is ethical. Julian Savulescu, Uehiro Professor of Practical Ethics at Oxford University, argues that sex selection is moral, based on his ethical principle of Procreative Beneficence: that “couples (or single reproducers) should select the child, of the possible children they could have, who is expected to have the best life, or at least as good a life as the others, based on the relevant, available information” [Savulescu 1]. Savulescu claims
In the article “Selecting the Perfect Baby: The Ethics of “Embryo Design,” is an article about a married couple, name Larry and June Shannon. They have a daughter, four years old, name Sally, who is diagnosed with Fanconi Anemia. Therefore, the Shannons are getting help from a research team, to find the perfect bone marrow transplant for Sally. The Shannon couple is also interested in having another child and they are aware of the risks and odds of success. However, a PGD process has to be performed and the couple must undergo an IVF procedure more than once, before the implantation is successful, to be able to produce a healthy full-term baby.
Making big choices in life can be difficult, especially if that big choice is having children. There are many men and women who are infertile that still want to have children. Most decide to adopt other children who do not have families or their families do not want them. But when adoption is not an option, there is now a way where those men and women can have their own children together through fertility treatments. Fertility treatments could be a good thing:being able to freeze egg and sperm, they can help infertile couples, and avoiding transmitted diseases would be easier.
| Given the contentious debate surrounding issues of procreation, develop an institutional policy, which can be applied to the range of treatment and research issues related to procreation.
Gina Kolata’s article, Ethics Questions Arise as Genetic Testing of Embryos Increases (2014), explains that as the increase of the testing of embryos for parents to choose whether or not to have children has also brought its ethical questions in the light. Kolata uses the Kalinskys case, a family in the article, and how their neurological disease, Gerstmann-Straussler-Schinker (GSS), has raised questions for ethicists who have looked into the case. Kolata’s purpose in writing this article is to inform the audience on the growing topic of embryo testing and also the ethical question that also accompany in order to have the audience to develop a personal view on the issue. Given how the author explains the technical terms used within the article, Kolata is writing to an audience that is not fully aware of genetic testing.
With new technologies available everyday, it seems almost as if we can customize our children. Reproduction is no longer an outcome of random and inherited genes, but now it’s a process of creating the child that we want to have. Fertility clinics are in debate as to whether or not it is ethical to be able to determine the sex of our children. Some view this as a valid option, while others see it as another step down the road to designer babies. But how far is too far? That is a question that we can only answer for ourselves. While this article remains unbiased, we are able to form our own opinion after seeing the pros and cons of both sides.
“One need not be deeply religious or oppose abortion to be troubled by the prospect of a society in which, as bioethicist Alexander Capron puts it, ‘The wanted child becomes the made-to-order child’" (Shannon). With rising concerns of building a baby through eugenics and IVF or In Vitro Fertilization, the government, court systems, activists, and public media is starting to take notice. Being able to pick your babies’ generic make up would be an ethical disaster with a slippery slope into an era where one’s child is created by man with build-a-baby qualities instead of the natural creation of a new life. Creating a designer baby through IVF technology would have severe consequences not only affecting this generation by all the future
Many couples hope of one day having the “American Dream.” A little house in a nice neighborhood with a white picket fence, a dog, and children playing in the yard. Sadly, this dream is not as easy to obtain for some as it is for others. 1 out of every 6 couples experience difficulty with fertility; however, not all hope is lost. The medical field offers several different options for those experiencing the pains of infertility such as IUI and IVF. For some, adoption seems to be the best, or only option, to form the precious family that they have always dreamed of having. Most people are familiar with the traditional adoption process, but few have heard of embryo adoption. Embryo adoption proves to be a great alternative to IUI, IVF, or traditional adoption for couples wanting to have a baby.
The first step towards embryonic stem cell research is obtaining the embryos. Currently, most embryos used in stem cell research are spare embryos from In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) treatment (de Wert & Mummery, 2003). This is because using the embryos for research is a better option than discarding them as medical waste. Besides donating or destroying the embryos, couples can also opt to let other couples adopt the embryos or continue to store them, which can get expensive (Fischbach & Fischbach, 2004). Along with treating infertility, the embryos are used for researching potential therapies. While donating embryos to research avoids the wasting of embryos, there are concerns about the quality of spare embryos. Embryos with the highest chance of resulting in a pregnancy will be chosen for the IVF treatment, potentially leaving less durable embryos as spares (de Wert & Mummery, 2003). This leads to researchers preferring to generate new embryos and embryonic cell lines for their own studies. While using spare embryos to further our knowledge in health and science is approved of, knowingly creating an embryo with the intention of destroying it, even for research, is
Many women are eager to become a mother, but infertility prevents some women from satisfying this need. However, modern biotechnologies combined with changed norms of culture now provide them reproductive choices such as in vitro fertilization. In order to develop these reproductive choices, we need to research on living human embryo. Because its procedures terminate the life of embryo, embryonic research stirs up public attention on its morality. Society questions if these methods are morally right. Do they violate the meaning of personhood and life? Do we kill a human when we research the embryos? These questions are asking our foundation of morality. We must be cautious and avoid any logical fallacies when we answer them. Using
Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) is a method that allows individuals the ability to biologically conceive a child. Individual’s who use the in vitro fertilization method has the opportunity to identify genetic defects in the embryos by using preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PDG) . However, having this ability raises various ethical issues.
New technological advances and scientific methods continue to change the course of nature. One of the current controversial advances in science and technology is the use of genetically modified embryos in which the study exceeds stem cell research. Scientists have begun planning for research involving human embryos in the genetic modification field. Many technological developments are responsible for improving our living standards and even saving lives, but often such accomplishments have troubling cultural and moral ramifications (Reagan, 2015). We are already beyond the days in which virtually the only procreative option was for a man and a woman to conceive the old-fashioned way (Reagan, 2015). Genetic modification of human embryos can be perceived as a positive evolution in the medical process yet it is surrounded by controversy due to ethical processes. Because this form of genetic modification could affect later born children and their offspring, the protection of human subjects should be a priority in decisions about whether to proceed with such research (Dresser, 2004). The term Human Genetic Engineering was originally made public in 1970. During this time there were several methods biologists began to devise in order to better identify or isolate clone genes for manipulation in several species or mutating them in humans.
Our focus for this presentation is the reproductive cloning for infertile couples. We, as a group, oppose the use of science and technology for this purpose. Is it morally justifiable to clone human and manipulate its genome? There are ethical dilemmas surrounding this
Many couples that are infertile still have a great desire to create a new life however the current method in vitro fertilization is very often ineffective. In fact it only results in a healthy pregnancy 10% of the time. However cloning could be much more effective. Contrary