Baby's Got Her New Genes On

My wife and I are expecting our fourth child in March. Friends will often ask, "How much longer till you can find out if it is a boy or a girl?" They know I'm hoping for my first daughter, while my wife would like a fourth boy. They know we'll be thrilled either way. No one has yet asked me, "How much longer till you find out if he'll have heart disease or pancreatic cancer or Alzheimer's disease?" These days will be soon upon us as genetic technology is giving us the ability to turn every child into a Mister Potato-Head toy, assemble the parts to get the desired outcome.

The September 3 New York Times glances at the ethical implications of the new technology of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), a process where through in vitro fertilization (IVF) parents are able "to detect a predisposition to cancers that may or may not develop later in life, and are often treatable if they do." Embryos that do show a predisposition to such disorders may be "discarded," and the couple tries again.

The Times reports triumphantly:

Soon, experts say, prospective parents may be able to choose between an embryo that could become a child with a lower risk of colon cancer who is likely to be fat, or one who is likely to be thin but has a slightly elevated risk of Alzheimer’s, or a boy likely to be short with low cholesterol but a significant risk of Parkinson’s, or a girl likely to be tall with a moderate risk of diabetes.

To illustrate the ethics and practicalities of this genetic embryo screening, the article traces the decision-making process of one couple, the Kingsburys, who are seeking to screen out the possibility of a family gene for colon cancer, discarding babies until they hit upon one who is free of it. The article states:

“You kind of feel like you shouldn’t be doing it,” Ms. Kingsbury said. “But then why would we go through all of this and not take those extra precautions?”

For the Kingsburys, the choice is still clear. Like any parents, they plan to tell Chloe the story of her birth. And if all goes well, they say, she will soon have a sibling who shares a similar tale.

And what will they tell her? We loved you because you'll always be cancer-free? You survived the frozen chamber or the waste basket because your genes were superior? You're a gift from heaven, at least the one we kept after we returned the others?

Christians aren't the only ones who have qualms with this. Disabled persons, of whatever religious background, recognize what this means for them, as do homosexual persons who now fear the discovery of a "gay gene" that could mark babies for "discard." Feminists recognize that, as the Times notes, screening for breast cancer in some families will mean simply eliminating the female embryos.

We should be sad about all of this, not sad as culture warriors who are losing a battle. We should be sad knowing that the techno-utopian Reich that overshadows us now may soon leave us with a world in which only Christians have Down's syndrome babies in their strollers, only Christians have bald little girls fighting through chemotherapy, only Christians have little boys in "husky" size pants as they struggle with childhood obesity.

How will we then talk to our neighbors about the miracle of the new birth, when the old one was something they engineered themselves? And how will we talk to our neighbors of the unconditional love of a father for his children, no matter what, when only Christians know what that means?

Comments

[Bobby Winters]

Forget about sin for a moment; forget about murder--if you can. WE have NO understanding of this complex dynamical system known as the genome. Is it possible that some of these genes that cause a predisoposition for a particular malady, might be part of what makes it all work?

[Chris Roberts]

And what will they tell her? We loved you because you'll always be cancer-free? You survived the frozen chamber or the waste basket because your genes were superior? You're a gift from heaven, at least the one we kept after we returned the others?

While I'm opposed to PGD and genetic screening (as well as in vitro fertilization which is required with PGD) I think we should be a bit more understanding of the couples going through PGD. It doesn't help any to turn an uncertain person into a monster. Indeed those who decide to go through with PGD are not monsters calously tossing away life as though it were leftovers from a fast food restaurant - they are concerned couples trying to decide what is the best way to go. Our job is to speak prophetically about that best way while understanding their parental concerns. It doesn't help to distort and misrepresent what they went through to arrive at their decision.

I feel comfortable saying that in the majority of these cases the parents involved would love their children no matter which of these potential ailments may have been inherited. The parents didn't act because they were horrified with the thought of having a child who was flawed, they chose their action because they were horrified with the thought of what their child might someday have to face. Society has convinced them that processes like this are okay, that an embryo is not a human life, and that screening like this is what a loving person would do. The task of the church is to show them the truth in love. I don't think we will convince them of that truth when we distort their own thoughts and motivations. They will know our words for a distortion and that will put everything we say in suspicion.

Let's speak prophetically about this issue. Let's remain firm about this issue. But let's be sure we are true in what we say and avoid that flamable old straw man.

[ron chandonia]

Let's speak prophetically about this issue.

I don't recall the prophets mincing words about evil. Christians today are branded "judgmental" and "intolerant" whenever they speak directly and forthrightly about any cause dear to the hearts of the feel-good=be-good crowd. I suspect the prophets would not have gotten a word out if they had been expected to be "sensitive" to the kind of misguided wrongdoers who get their moral bearings from The New York Times.

[Chris Roberts]

Ron,

I don't recall the prophets mincing words about evil.

I don't see the prophets inventing motivations that do not exist. It's one thing to be clear and direct about something being evil, it's another to pretend the motives of those doing evil are also evil. Sometimes people do evil when motivated by evil, sometimes people do evil when trying to do the right thing. Certainly the first category is more malicious than the second. Russell's words would portray these parents as doing evil with evil motivation but their motives are not evil. They are trying to do the right thing and this is what appears as the right thing. The way to get the truth across to them is not to attribute to them evil motivations that they simply don't have. The best thing for us to do is to show how their good motivations are best fulfilled by following a path that affirms and defends life and the special uniqueness of every individual. This has nothing to do with mincing words, it has everything to do with presenting truth in an honest and loving way.

I'm not sure why you bring up those who give accusations of judgmentalism or intolerance, my comment had nothing to do with either and I don't accuse Russell of either. What I accuse him of is invention. Inventing motives that do not exist. Creating a straw man and directing his attacks against that straw man. I fully affirm declaring the truth that these practices are wrong and violate the will of a holy God. I do not affirm making people look like monsters when they are just parents looking for the truth. They are harassed enough by Satan, let's not turn the church into Satan's children by ourselves becoming accusers that invent lies against them.

[Unapologetic Catholic]

To assist these parents in the decision making process, you might want to turn the question around. Instead of preventing death from a particular cause, why not ask the prospective parents, "What would you like you child's cause of death to be?" We know that every one of those precious babies will die someday-some from colon cancer, some crossing the street. Focus on the fact that death from some cause is inevitable. Merely altering the cause of death to or from from colon cancer to heart attack to Alzheimer's may serve to demonstrate that most pre-birth selections are not likely to be helpful, as a practical matter.

[ron chandonia]

Sometimes people do evil when motivated by evil, sometimes people do evil when trying to do the right thing.

I have yet to meet the people who are motivated by evil. Didn't Aquinas say that people only choose evil because of some good they want to obtain? Clearly, that is what is going on with IVF generally. If you raise objections to the process with people who have conceived children in this way, they simply point to their kids and say, "How can this be wrong?"

If you cite various evils attendant on this process--or, indeed, almost any related choice these same people might make--the response is invariably the accusation of judgmentalism: You are judging my motives! You've never walked in my shoes! You can't know what was in my heart!

It's true: All anyone else can see is the behavior itself, which is objectively evil. In this case, you chose to destroy babies whom you feared might have XYZ defect, and that was wrong. As far as I can tell, that is exactly what Russell Moore's post says.

[holmegm]

>Sometimes people do evil when motivated by evil,
>sometimes people do evil when trying to do the right
>thing. Certainly the first category is more malicious
>than the second.

Is it? You are far more likely to get away (in this life) with the second; to get a pass from society and yourself. Those who call you on the second will be called intolerant and uncompassionate; you will feel justified in feeling wronged and hugging the sin to yourself.

The second category sounds far more dangerous, in the long run, then the first.

[Sonetka]

Chris Roberts has a good point. You do not win anyone over by calling them a soulless monster - the trouble is that by doing so you are being both inaccurate and not acknowledging that they are in a painful situation. The vast majority of CURRENT PGDers do so because they are looking for conditions like trisomy 16 and so forth which it would be impossible for the baby to survive - for example, sometimes one parent has a balanced translocation wherein 90% of the embryos they conceive (naturally or via IVF) will die in utero. We're not helping ourselves by painting them with the "designer babies" brush. We're showing them that all we know about the situation is what we've read in a couple of notionally accurate articles. The sort of picking of embryos the article describes is by no means the experience of a vast majority of PGDers. I'm not excusing it, but I am saying that a lot of mutual shuddering over the eeevilness of the parents will help nobody.

[Kamilla]

People can be soulless monsters without realizing they are - what else do you call someone who picks over their offspring and decides which will live and which will be discarded like vegetable peelings?

Kamilla

[ron chandonia]

According to the Times, these are the specifics of their featured case study:

Now a growing number of couples like the Kingsburys are crossing a new threshold for parental intervention in the genetic makeup of their offspring: They are using P.G.D. to detect a predisposition to cancers that may or may not develop later in life, and are often treatable if they do.

These people put their lives--and their values--on display in order to make a point to the rest of us, the point that the NYTimes is crowing about in the article cited: Yes, we can eliminate from our lives even the possibility that we will have to care for children with difficult medical conditions, including many conditions which are treatable.

Why is it that the rest of us are forbidden from calling that horrible? I truly do not get it.

[Sonetka]

Nobody is saying not to call the acts horrible. But I must point out that this does not necessarily make the people involved irretrievably horrible. And again, I must point out - the case study featured in the article (because God knows the news media never picks inflammatory extremes and tries to paint them as a Growing National Trend) is NOT the norm for how PGD works right now; usually it's used to destroy embryos who, barring a miracle, would never, ever survive pregnancy. Do I think this is right? Not at all. But to conflate the two kinds of PGD is not wise on the part of pro-lifers, and to refuse to examine things from the perspective of the parents, who are probably minimally if at all religious and are being presented this as a way to spare their children real suffering, is also unwise. (The highest ideal these days is to keep everybody comfortable - a very seductive ideal it is, too).

You CANNOT write these people off; Christ died for their sins and souls as much as any other, and although they do monstrous things they probably do not know what it is that they are doing. The ethical landscape today is so bizarrely shifted that they probably, sincerely, believe they're doing their children a favour. And one thing that will NOT cause them to reflect and really examine their motives, and the ethics that surround them, is to write them off as monsters, plain and simple. I mean, good lord, look at St. Paul! Should Christians have refused to look after him after he was blinded, saying "No, he's a soulless murdering monster."? I imagine that would have tested his newfound faith pretty severely. Someone who hasn't yet had their own Road to Damascus could be driven away at the venom and lack of charity which can be displayed - not to mention the ignorance; if someone did PGD because they had a 90% chance of miscarrying due to a chromosomal translocation, and then their Christian friend gets in their face about how horrible they are for only wanting "designer perfect" children (when all they really wanted were children who survived to be born!) it would not help them.

I'm sorry to be harsh, but I was once in a situation where I did something (not PGD) which was also very damaging and reprehensible, although what I ultimately sought was something good. The people who brought me back? Not the ones who called me a selfish, evil wench, but the ones who were friendly, who explained the truth of things plainly, and who understood that I had suffered both as a consequence of AND BEFORE my sin.

I'm sorry to be harsh, but it drives me crazy to see people dividing into Virtuous Us vs. Monstrous Them like this. "I thank thee, Lord, that thou has not made me like this Publican!"

[Kamilla]

Sonetka said, "is NOT the norm for how PGD works right now; usually it's used to destroy embryos who, barring a miracle, would never, ever survive pregnancy"

That's simply not true. PGD is eugenics at its rawest and is used to destroy those who would certainly survive pregnancy and even thrive. The article itself points to the use of PGD to destroy those exhibiting the genetic defect causing Down's syndrome.

[Kamilla]

I think our discussion here has lost track of what I think are some very searing questions, which Dr. Moore closes his post with,

"How will we then talk to our neighbors about the miracle of the new birth, when the old one was something they engineered themselves? And how will we talk to our neighbors of the unconditional love of a father for his children, no matter what, when only Christians know what that means? "

How, indeed.

Kamilla

[Sonetka]

Certainly, they destroy embryos with Down's, which is as tragic as the destruction of all the other embryos. I did not say that ALL embryos destroyed would not survive. I said most. Please do not put words into my mouth.

[Kamilla]

Sonetka,

I did not put words in your mouth - you used the words, "norm" and "usually", I never indicated you said "all".

Your contention about the customary, normal or usual use of PGD is, quite simply, wrong. PGD is used for everything from determining sibling compatibility for cord blood/bone marrow donation to sex selection and, in fact, it is most *frequently* used for just what its name indicates - to avoid passing on genetic disease. You can perform a simple search at cbhd.org using the acronym, "pgd" to see ample evidence for this.

Kamilla

[Kip Watson]

Amen to Chris Roberts. Thank you, Jesus, for a rare voice of Christian reason on this subject.

The funny thing is, I agree with so many of the premises of the writers here. I believe the embryo is fully human, I am strongly opposed to unnecessary destruction of embryos. I support Pres Bush in opposing expansion of Embryonic stem cell research and human cloning.

I have a disabled child whom my wife and I refused to terminate -- without a second thought -- a decision which fills me joy every day of our lives. I think that medical science is asking too much with too little to offer by seeking the authority to clone and destroy embryos for research. I think they are tempted with the offer of God-like powers.

In political terms I am one of your firm allies!

But then I hear the usual shrill chorus. The alternative eugenicists who would consign others to barrenness in the name of their unwavering prideful philosophy.

Who I am standing alongside? How can I be on the path of righteousness if I am surrounded by this baying mob of spiteful, hateful Pharisees?!

[Chris Roberts]

PGD is eugenics at its rawest



This is akin to what I'm talking about. PGD is hardly eugenics at its rawest. It is eugenics, but only barely. Typically eugenics involves what you mentioned in a later comment - sex selection, trait selection, etc. The purpose of PGD is to help children avoid terrible diseases. The purpose of eugenics is to craft a superior human. Yes, avoiding terrible diseases would be part of a superior human but the motives behind the two are quite different. PGD is still wrong but don't pretend it's something that it isn't.



As I understand it, PGD is simply a diagnostic method to determine whether or not an embryo contains genetic traits that could lead to certain diseases. Many of the methods used for PGD are, I think, essentially the same as methods used for sex selection but PGD itself is not a process to determine gender or other attributes. By definition the only thing PGD is used for is screening of genetically inherited diseases.



I will emphasize again - PGD is wrong. It is wrong for various reasons. But it being wrong doesn't mean the people using it are monsters. They are not eugenics trying to build a superior race, they are concerned parents trying to do what is best for their children. If you want to help the problem then provide them loving council that will show them the truth. Screaming in their faces with accusations they know are untrue will not help matters one iota.

[Chris Roberts]

oops, forgive all the extra spaces. I can't keep track of whether or not the site I'm commenting on does automatic formatting. :)

[Kamilla]

Chris Roberts wrote, "The purpose of PGD is to help children avoid terrible diseases."

No, the purpose of PGD is to help parents avoid bearing children with terrible diseases - it merely helps the children avoid those diseases by destroying them before the symptoms are manifest. That is the very essence of eugenics - "improvement" of the human gene pool.

Kamilla

[James A. Altena]

Chris is right that it will not win minds and hearts simply to regard those involved as intentional monsters, even though they unreflectively are doing something monstrous.

At the same time, Chris and Kip are demonizing the other side in the same way that they have just decried. E.g., ". . . baying mob of spiteful, hateful Pharisees?!"

Overall, I think Moore is right (and Ron and Kamilla) and is being misconstrued here. If one reads the NY Times article, it is not about the dilemma of truly exceptional hard cases (for which the Times has not the slightest real concern), but simply a thin veneer for pushing its pro-abortion agenda.

Perhaps one point that set off Chris' opponents here -- it certainly rang alarm bells for me -- was his ill-considered talk of "speaking prophetically." This is a now common cliche (especially among certain theological revisionists who use it to attack orthodox Christian doctrines and moral values) that verges on or crosses over into blasphemy. We cannot generally claim to have the special calling and charism of the prophets (cf. St. Paul on prophecy as a distinct gift of the spirit given only to some), and to claim their mantle in expounding one's own views is at best presumptuous and at worst incredibly arrogant. When I for one hear someone talk of "speaking prophetically," I am reminded of Samuel Johnson's comment on a certain dinner guest: "The more he spoke of honor, the faster I counted my spoons."

[C.H. Marengo]

Chris Roberts seems like a man who could convince himself of anything. I suppose doing horrible things makes one a horrible person, no? If not, then do any horrible people exist? Perhaps not completely horrible, but maybe horrible enough to willfully murder the innocent. Is murder too strong a word, maybe "choose" or "cull" would be more appropriate?

A battle for hearts and minds cannot be won with half-truths or lies. Isocrates said that a slave is "he who cannot speak his mind." Christians should not allow themselves to be enslaved by the culture of death and the propaganda masters at the New York Times. The truth is that this "screening process" is intrinsically evil and it opens the door to a dark future for humanity. This opens the gate for genetic engineering and the creation of a world that would be the envy of any Nazi eugenicist. This is eugenics, whether you like it or not.

These parents are crafting their children with barely the concern exhibited by a pet owner ordering a "labradoodle". They are creating a cild that will not inconvenience or annoy them by getting sick. Who has time to care for ill or defective children, they are too good for that. How dare defective genes defy their vanity? Their legacy shall be one of genetic perfection! Who cares if a few eggs are cracked to fashion a genetically superior ommellette? Give me convenience or give me death!

[Kip Watson]

The thing is that the moral issues issues *are* difficult. An embryo is *both* a distinct human life *and* a clump of cells much smaller than the average tissue sample. Embryos die during the reproductive process in their hordes. Successful IVF probably saves many more than it destroys. Screening embryos in some cases is the only way to allow a woman to have a child at all, and hence for the child to have life (and please don't bother with the 'hie thee to a convent' remarks).

The principle of letting one life die in order to save another more viable one is the basis of triage -- it hasn't appeared out of nowhere. So if leftover IVF embryos can save many lives (and please don't nit-pick me, I'm fully aware that no such cures yet exist), even that would not be leaping into the unknown in ethical terms.

Human cloning is another issue altogether, which is precisely why Pres Bush (and our John Howard), have permitted one but not the other. Likewise, frivolously screening out embryos is widely regarded as ethically wrong, but good hearted people can disagree on where to draw that line.

These are all difficult areas that would greatly benefit from the insight of Christian moral thinking. Every technological advance has created such problems. Convincing people of the moral facts underpinning them is difficult. But you guys make it make it well nigh impossible the way you keep handing ammunition to the opposition.

So, you don't really care about *doing* good in the world -- in this instance about successfully implementing moral guidelines for this very new area of medicine -- but you just want to proclaim your own goodness in as loud as a voice as possible, well, then you are a Pharisee. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

Like I said before, I'm the good ally on this issue. It's you guys who are the unreliable allies.

[Kip Watson]

...or to put it another way, the enemy is at the gates, and you leave the defences abandoned while you going around the city knifing those on your own side for imagined treachery...

[holmegm]

>How can I be on the path of righteousness if I am
>surrounded by this baying mob of spiteful, hateful
>Pharisees?!

Wow. Here we go. The favorite insult of the religious left.

Let's consider, for a moment, who the Pharisees actually were. They were the "nuanced" folk who came up with elaborate reasons that they didn't always have to obey scripture. And then this wild-eyed guy from the hinterlands showed up spouting scripture at them (I'm referring to their perception of Him, of course), seemingly not appreciating their educated nuances.

Also, why do you imagine any disagreement as a "baying, spiteful mob" around you? Since this image seems to arise a lot in certain imaginations, it might be worth pondering what it means. What could be making you feel so accused, so convicted?

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Let's consider, for a moment, who the Pharisees actually were. They were the "nuanced" folk who came up with elaborate reasons that they didn't always have to obey scripture. <<<

Let's engage in vast oversimplifications, shall we?

[holmegm]

>Let's engage in vast oversimplifications, shall we?

Like, say, calling people opposed to genetic screening and selective abortions Pharisees?

No thanks.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Like, say, calling people opposed to genetic screening and selective abortions Pharisees?

No thanks.<<<

Depends on what you mean by Pharisee, doen't it? As for selective abortion, I fail to see how there is any room for wiggling here, even for a "Pharisee". The Church has been adamant on abortion from its origins, and attempts to get out of that are impossible.

As to who the Pharisees were, the first question one has to ask is "which Pharisees?", since there were at least two, and probably many more schools of thought within the overall movement. The description of Jesus' attitude towards Pharisees mentioned in the previous post is grossly misleading at best, since Pharisees were among his followers in life and formed a significant portion of the Church after his Resurrection. Most modern Christians have a very dim understanding not only of modern rabbinical Judaism, but also of the Second Temple Judaism known to Jesus and his disciples. So invoking the Pharisees as rule-ridden, nit-picking, hypocrites in love with their own sanctity merely shows the ignorane of the person making the aspersion.

[Kamilla]

Kip,

"Screening embryos in some cases is the only way to allow a woman to have a child at all, and hence for the child to have life."

This is a false claim, Kip. IVF and implantation can be done without screening. The *only* reason to screen is to weed out the undesirables, which I might addd, already possess life! In addition, there is no need to create the surplus emryos that would be use in the weeding out process. Many couples who use IVF and are familiar with the process and its ethical problems elect to only create those embryos which will be impanted and use no screening process.

There is absolutely no difficulty in the moral issues involved, trying to make them difficult is what does hand "ammunition to the opposition". IVF does not save more lives than it destroys - in fact all of the lives it destroys are created by IVF itself - it can hardly then be said that IVF is saving *ANY* lives. There is a vast moral gulf between the IVF practice of creating many more lives than are needed simply for the convenience of saving the most pactical, "worthy" or healthy ones and the natural process of early spontaneous abortion or failure to implant. I am at a loss as to how you could possibly see moral equivalency between the two.

Your addition of embryonic stem cell harvesting to this mix only muddies the waters. That argument is for another thread, I think.

If you're a "good" ally, no thanks. I'd rather do without.

Kamilla

[James A. Altena]

"So, you don't really care about *doing* good in the world . . . you just want to proclaim your own goodness in as loud as a voice as possible. Well, then you are a Pharisee."

No, Kip, unlike you calling yourself the "good ally", we who oppose you here are not concerned with proclaiming our own goodness at all, because we know we are sinners and not at all good in God's eyes. Rather, we are indeed concerned about doing good -- and that most definitely includes upholding what God, not us, has taught us to be right and wrong, without Pharisaical (to apply the compliment back) rationalizations that call evil good.

I'm counting my spoons faster by the second. . . .

[Kamilla]

The cruel irony in all of this is that these parents who wish to save themselves from the pain of an imperfect child are consigning themselves and their children to unknown risks caused by the very process they seek as their salvation.

The maternal environment where early embryonic life occurs is incredibly complex and will never be duplicated in the laboratory. Research is increasingly showing that no matter what conditions are chosen for the in vitro fertilization and initial cellular divisions, those conditions influence gene expression in a global manner. Just one of the seemingly unavoidable risks inherent in IVF is the underexpression of H19, a gene which appears to act as a tumor suppressor. It is associated with Beckwith-Wiedeman syndrome which itself is characterized by a predisposition to certain tumors, among other problems. So, in the quest to avoid known cancer risks, they are creatiing other unkown cancer risks!

We, with our puny minds and chemistry sets think we can play God, or at least play Dr. Frankenstein. We have no idea, no idea at all.

Kamilla

[GL]

I agree that we should not impugn the motives of those who have used PGD. I think we can assume that their motives are good. We can also assume that their actions are severely ill-informed, not because they have not had the best medical advice, but doctors are not the ones from whom one should get moral advice. If the parents sought no other advice, then they erred greatly, but again, that is no basis to impugn their motives.

Many of those who have used PGD may have also sought advice from a pastor, but we all know that the value of that advice depends greatly upon the orthodoxy of the person giving it. Someone who approves of abortion, for instance, probably has not problem with IVF and PGD. Even many who are nominally pro-life, however, may not understand all of ethical issues surrounding IVF and PGD. They should, of course, learn about those procedures before giving advice, but you can many do not. Again, that gives us no basis to impugn the motives of parents who sought moral advice but was given bad advice.

Nonetheless, whether they were uninformed or not, the act itself is still evil. Ignorance may have relevance in the Divine judgment; I pray it does. The efforts one made to inform their conscience before acting may play a role; again, I pray it does. That is a different matter, however, than whether the act itself is evil. It is the duty of men like Dr. Moore to educate young pastors-to-be to understand the moral issues so that they can provide appropriate counsel when the questions arise in their congregations. I have no doubt the SBTS does that and I, for one, am grateful for it and other seminaries like it. Because of the pastors seminaries like SBTS produce, we can hope that couples in the future will have better information about the moral issues surrounding the decisions they make in this and many other areas.

[Tony Esolen]

Humanae Vitae, and Evangelium Vitae, look wiser and wiser. We want sex without children, and then we want children without sex. We end up by leaving ourselves poor ground from which to defend marriage against homosexual activists (see Allan Carlson's powerful article in the current issue), and poor ground from which to defend the human race against those who would manufacture life, if they could, to meet their own specifications.

Also, though I am a little bit of a Luddite, there's no comparison between this issue and that of technological development generally. Contraception is not, as a matter of plain fact, medical. Quite the opposite: the "problem" for the couple is that the organs are working all too well, and they wish to thwart the natural functions. As for IVF, it does not heal a damaged womb, or replace it with a prosthesis; it fundamentally alters the nature of the conception of the human being, making it subject to human control and, alas, manipulation. It is strangely gnostic in its severing of married love from the marital act. The child conceived is not conceived from an act of self-abandoning love physically expressed, but from an act of will. No depth of love that husband and wife feel for one another can change that fact. The more Christian thing to do, the humbler thing to do, would be to care for one of the millions of children already conceived, by adoption if possible.

I think, and I don't mean to offend anybody here, that we have lost the sense of the holiness of sexual intimacy and the sanctity of human life; and by that I mean that we no longer feel deeply that human life is God's alone to give, and God's alone, except for just cause and by the God-ordained authorities, to take. It will be a bitter irony if our civilization is brought crashing down less by those who wish to take away human life illicitly than by those who wish illicitly to usher it in.

[Kamilla]

Tony,

This is beautiful and powerful. Thank you!

Kamilla

[Maureen]

We can't judge people, and all people are in the likeness of God. So yes, there are no "horrible people"; and if we say there are, we run the peril of having God say we are horrible.

However, we can judge actions, and there are plenty of horrible actions being done by people, and horrible choices being made by people, and horrible things which result. We can denounce such horrible sins as much as we like, and hate them with all our hearts.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>We can't judge people, and all people are in the likeness of God.<<<

No, all men are made in the image of God. The "likeness" is what we lost at the Fall, and can only be restored through life in Jesus Christ, by becoming partakers of the divine nature.

[Ranee Mueller]

My husband said that we ought to turn the question around and ask these parents what they think their children will do when they (the parents) get old and perhaps ill. Will they count the cost and find that it is cheaper, more expedient, and will save the parents' suffering, if they simply push the Kevorkian button rather than pay for and attend to their care? If they shouldn't do so, why should the parents discard those other embryos?

[GL]

For an interesting discussion of where science is leading us, listen to today's (September 6, 2006) Issues, Etc. broadcast. I listened to it live, but it should be available as an archive by tomorrow. They discussed college age women who become egg donors. It was really sad. Related to this thread was a discussion of how women with favorable genetic traits are paid more for their eggs than other women.

[Mo]

Very thought provoking. As a person born with a cleft palate, I am sensitive to the thought of these 'advances'. Had this technology been available when I was conceived, I am sure that my parents would've kept me anyway. But there are many parents who would not want to be bothered.

It's terrifying that I have to live in a world where soon, only the 'perfect' and 'beautiful' babies will be allowed to live. What an insult to so many, to be basically told that we are not worthy to be alive simply because we look a certain way or because of a disability or because of some genetic propensity for disease.

[stuart Koehl]

>>>Very thought provoking. As a person born with a cleft palate, I am sensitive to the thought of these 'advances'. Had this technology been available when I was conceived, I am sure that my parents would've kept me anyway. But there are many parents who would not want to be bothered.<<<

Of course, without such tests, we never would have developed procedures for treating such abnormalities in utero.

[GL]

For another interesting article on a closely related topic, read Evangelicals and the Brave New World.

[Sailorette]

stuart Koehl
Of course, without such tests, we never would have developed procedures for treating such abnormalities in utero.

Bull. My godmother had a cleft palate, as well. The idea that without genetic testing, no-one would think to fix it with surgery in utero is just silly. It's a logical extension of fixing that defect by surgery, carried to the earliest point.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Bull. My godmother had a cleft palate, as well. The idea that without genetic testing, no-one would think to fix it with surgery in utero is just silly. It's a logical extension of fixing that defect by surgery, carried to the earliest point.<<<

Well, as a matter of principle, one should repair defects as soon as possible. We used to let infant heart defects wait until several months after birth; now we do them in the womb, and babies thrive better. Same with other birth defects like spina bifida or gastro-intestinal disorders. If you believe that life begins in the womb, then there is an obligation to treat the unborn patient in the same manner one would treat the post-natal one. At some point, we are going to be able to repair damage at the chromosomal level, and when that happens, those treatments will be applied to the unborn as well as the born.

[Lillet]

It's very sad to me that so many people are eevn considering this given the pivotal role diet and lifestyle choices play in cancer and both types of diabetes.

Read _the China Study_ and _Disease Proof Your Child_ and this becomes a non-issue.

[GL]

Related to this thread is the following story in The (Cleveland) Plain-Dealer: In vitro fertilization leads to tough questions: Couples have to decide what happens to unused frozen embryos.  The article lists three options for such couples:

• They can opt to have their embryos destroyed.
• They can donate them to an infertile couple.
• They can designate them for research.

Unless I am missing something, the first and third involves chosing to permit someone to kill one's own children. The second one raises all sorts of other complicated moral issues.

What hath man wrought?

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