Embryo Legislation?

[Wayne Luke]

Assisted Fertility is one of mankind's greatest achievements but it can also be our undoing. It, along with other things, puts us outside the evolutionary chain and can eventually cause grievous harm to the species.

If a person is genetically infertile should we allow them to create more genetically infertile children? What happens if everyone becomes infertile due to these genes being perpetrated, pollution, disease or any number of outside causes? What happens to those extra embryos that no one wants? How does this sit with abortion rights or even adoption rights? There are a lot of questions around this issue that no one is talking about. Mainly because people don't want to tell infertile couples that they can't have children. Also because its a major profit center for many research doctors and groups. However one can't look at Assisted Fertility as anything but one step below cloning. What happens when researchers find the trigger to make an egg and sperm combine DNA? You don't need both genders then. Just split the DNA from a single cell and recombine it in an egg and trigger stem cell development.

Personally, I think there should be more controls on this sort of Assisted Fertility. 8 embryos puts the mother and each child at risk. This would fall under criminal negligence and if there were a death involved also volutary manslaughter. The mother that endangers herself and her potential children in this way should seek psychiatric evaluation. She could have achieved the same result with four sets of twins without the health risks involved. I do know why the doctor embedded eight embryos though. This actually happens a lot. The reason is that many times most of the embryos are not accepted and do not form a placental connection with the mother. The larger the number of embryos the greater your chances. However more research should be done to prevent rejection and lower the health risks of multiple implants.

Situations like this bring up a lot of questions. Ones that I really don't have the answers for. However as a species, we need to address these questions sooner rather than later or we could breed ourselves out of existence by playing god. The last thing we need is for all those Apocolyptic movies to become Prophetic movies. Without proper control and more research, we could be heading that way. Tying this in to other issues like overpopulation, reduced food supply, climate change and you can be creating a lot of hazards.