The proto-humans (in the developmental sense, not the evolutionary one) that are used for IVF and embryonic stem cells are EMBRYOS, not fetuses. Tiny blobs of as-yet-undifferentiated cells, no more than a few days old, indistinguishable from the embryos of other deuterostomes. In fact, by the time the fetus stage is reached, cell fates have been set and it’s not really feasible to generate actual stem cells, for the same reason that adult stem cells aren’t as medically useful as embryonic ones.

Whether or not you believe that human life is sacred from the moment of conception, I think it’s important to use terms accurately. Saying that fetuses are destroyed to create embryonic stem cell lines is misleading. No doubt that deliberate(?) misuse of terms helps inflame the right-to-lifers, though.

Thank you. It is so nice to click on FA and read an intelligent, well thought out commentary, especially from someone who has observed what he or she is commenting on.

Having a sister that needed to go the IVF route due to many medical complications……. they don’t let you just pull 1 egg and 1 sperm to throw in the little petri dish. ALso, it is not something that insurance or the gov’t pays for…. it is out of your own pockets.

First off, pulling only one of those tiny suckers would be a challenge.

Secondly; not all of the sperm and all of the eggs pulled actually survive the procedure.(Kind of like in real life, real time fertilization…… there ain’t just 1 sprem in there trying to win the race; nor does every egg a woman produces get fertilized…. Am I a murderer simply because I have a menstrual cycle?? No more so than the masterbating male side of the population.)

Thirdly, it is an expensive and uncomfortable (at least on the female side) procedure. Why do it more than once if you don’t have to?

In her first IVF, none of the 3 implanted fetuses (actually at that point they are still in the zygote stage I believe…… ) ‘took’. Second time, they popped in 3 ‘viable’ blobs, and she got 1 child. 2 years later, they decided to go for a sibling; they input 2 more of the blobs (all of these are from the initial ‘batch’), and poof! Both ‘took’, so she has 3 beautiful children all together. (out of 8 zygotes used. You can see why they make a small ‘batch’? Also, it isn’t as if they are making hundreds and hundreds of zygotes for each IVF treatment, but they are making up enough that based on the natural failure rate they should get at least 1 or 2 kids)

All of this took considerably LESS time, and signifigantly less money than adopting even 1 child, much less 3.

Why would people choose IVF over adopting the children in orphanges the world over? Hmmmmm……. Let’s see….. there is:

1. Prohibitive costs. Adopting 1 child will cost $12,000 - $25,000 before you ever even get to hold that child in your arms.

2. Red Tape. Oceans and Oceans of Red Tape. The number of forms and documents etc. that some countries require is staggering. Just when you think you have them all done, there are more, or they ‘misplaced one’ or….

3. ‘Loosing a Child’. Especially in the US, the birth parents can change their mind right up to the very end. Even after all is said and done, all of the assessments have been completed, all of the home studies have been done, all of the paperwork is ready to file, the prospective parents have turned their entire lives upside down and inside out getting ‘ready’, and at the last minute the birth parent says ‘no’ and the prospective parents start back at square one, looking at 12-24 months before they can potentially have a child, after going through all of the new home studies etc. Even in adopting from other countries, I’ve known friends who have gotten right to the final steps and are on their way halfway around the world to get a child only to arrive and find out they are going all the way back to square 1. I have 1 particular friend that did an ‘open adoption’ 7 years ago. She and her husband got the girl when she was about 18 months old (teen mother, lots of troubles). The adoption wasn’t ‘finalized’ for over a year (during which time the birth mother could have changed her mind, and almost did right before the papers were signed when the little girl was 3.)

4. Health concerns. Because the child is so far away, you can only rely on the reports from the orphanages and the adoptions groups. You many have a child that has serious health issues that you are never told about, and only discover too late. And yes, I know that a ‘healthy’ child is not a given in nature. However, if you are told that you are addopting a healthy child, and are suddenly in a position of having a child that has medical issues beyond what you are capable of caring for, or beyond the expenses that you can take on, what do you do? I know people that have spent every dime they had, to cover the adoption costs, only to discover that they were looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical issues that had not been disclosed.

Personally, I would much rather see Stem Cell research continue with the backing of both private and public resources. Yes, there is always the possibility of knowledge being used for evil rather than good, but I think that the possibilities of helping or curing so many of the debilitating maladies that are out there today outweigh the risks of being overrun by blue-eyed blonds. Besides, I live in Minnesota….. 3/4 of the state population are blue-eyed blonds…. I’ve never seen a problem.

Katie

Snowflake Babies. What a pathetic, half-hearted, futile and flaccid movement. Why aren’t all these christians clamoring for the release from frigid captivity of all these “youngest human lives”? Where is the indignation? Where are the cries of “playing god” to the couples who created all these “pre-born humans” and only used one? How can anyone who decry the use of ESC possibly not be equally as outraged at the IVF procedures which “conceived” these tens of thousands of potential right wing voters?

Oh, did I give it away at the last part.

Shit.

Any time a medical tech hands you a pill with a pair of tongs, it’s a memorable moment.

Killing people is fine, it’s fetuses that count.

Between the death penalty, sending soldiers off to a phoney-bologny war, turning a blind eye to genocide in Dafur, and cutting WIC (Women, infants and Children Program) which provided help for pregnant women, and their young children, directly increasing the rate and number of abortions, this has been one of the bloodiest administrations. But let’s go save those 400,000 fertilized eggs!

I always have a problem with the “Acting like God” argument. (This argument is not directed at you, but at the others who use it).

A. What if I don’t believe in God?
2. Who says that God wants us to live with diseases and not use the brain he gave us to discover cures.
iii. Any one who demands to stop others who are “acting like God” are themselves acting like God. When God himself tells me what he wants, I’ll listen. In the meantime don’t bother me.

This argument boils down to what you think life is.
Is sperm sacred?
Are eggs?
Once fertilized is this sacred life? Or does it need to be implanted in the uterus (medical definition of pregnancy)?
Or does this process need to develop and have brain waves to be called a separate individual?

I believe the latter.

Why do right to lifers fight so hard for the unborn and wash their hands at birth? Why are fetuses so much more important than the people they become?