A close look at In-Vitro-Fetilization or Test Tube Babies
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Who’s a Who? by Dianne Irving, Ph.D.
Carrie and Tim were thrilled! They might finally become parents! Long dark years had preceeded this triumph and any hope of Carie’s becoming pregnant again had almost been destroyed. Massive scar tissues—caused by her earlier abortions, sexually transmitted diseases and the use of IUD—had left her infertile. But thanks to in-vitro-fertilization(IVF) clinic, their troubles seemed to be over. Technicians had successfully fertilized 11 ‘pre-embryos’ for them, and were ready to implant into Carrie’s womb!
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Their strategy: of the embryos, three were discarded due to genetic diseases, leaving eight healthy ones. Five would be “reduced” during pregnancy to allow the remaining two the best chances. Three embryos would be frozen and either implanted later, destroyed, or donated for use in experimental research, to help other infertile couples.
Carie and Tim poured over the complicated “informed consent” forms that explained in detail the basic human embryology, medical procedures, risks and benefits, and the proposed strategy. One question kept haunting them. “Just exactly what are these little ‘pre-embryos’?, they asked their IVF researchers. “Would it be wrong to destroy some of them?” “Absolutely not,” fired back the researcher, waving his hand towards the stack of bio-ethics text-books, journals and videos on the sagging shelves behind him. “Every expert in this business unanimously agrees that they are merely…loose collections of totipotent stem cells, about the size of the period at the end of the sentence! They are just…whats, not whos,” he explained, erasing any lingering doubts in Carie’s and Tim’s minds. The “informed consent” forms were signed, and the strategy put in place.
Hello? Not whos? What does that mean? What is who, and why isn’t it just a what? Reality check!
Are you ready?
There is no such thing as pre-embryo. They just made that up! All of these little whats are little whose, are little persons!
Two issues have been confused here: One is scientific; the other is philosophical. The hard, cold scientific fact is that at fertilization, these tiny embryos of Carie’s and Tims were already real live, existing unique human beings. Carie and Tim were already parents—even before implantation took place! This is not a “pro-life” or “faith” position. It is an objective scientific fact agreed to by every human embryologist world-wide—and anyone who tries to claim otherwise is fooling you. Look it up yourself in the library. Biology 101.
But, then, the philosophical question is: Does that necessarily mean that they are human persons, too? That is, are they also whos, persons with ethical and legal rights and protections all their own—just like you and me!
The answer is: YES! Personhood depends on the existence of human nature, not on whether or not certain human function and activities are actually being exercised at the time (e.g.,being self conscious, willing, choosing, loving, relating to the world, feeling pain or pleasure). Otherwise, even adults who are mentally ill, the comatose, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s patients, drug addicts, alcoholics, the disabled—even you and me when we are sleeping—would not be persons. Ridiculous! Every human being is simultaneously a human person. No exceptions; including you!
This is the hoax of the millennium, and the joke is not on you but on our entire culture. It’s a word-game, and lengths to which bio-ethicists have gone to fool us defies the imagination. In order to justify and rationalize the use of these young vulnerable human persons in research, they have simply relabeled them to make us feel less guilty. Rather than acknowledge the hard cold scientific facts and use a concept of person that matches reality, bio-ethicists call them pre-embryos or just genetic individuals, and not developmental individuals; just biological individuals, but not ontological individuals; only transient natures but not stable human nature’s biological life, not personal life. Pretty inventive. The consequences are dark.
Since IVF couples such as Carie and Tim are already parents, they already have the moral and legal obligations to protect their children from harm. This means they cannot allow any of their children to be eliminated because of some lab test, or abort them to make way for larger brothers and sisters, freeze them or donate them for destructive experimentation for any reason, no matter how good or bad. Nevertheless, we now have “emergency contraception,” all sorts of human embryo research, and drug companies wanting to use fetal tissue for screening new drugs. Legal precedents have been set for the disposition of frozen embryos and for regulating abortions. This scientific fraud has completely permeated our scientific and public policy institutions, and has been been used in local, state and international documents and policies.
(Source: Celebrate Life, 2000 issue)
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