Bioethics News

Today, the Wall Street Journal reported that a Los Angeles fertility clinic is offering parents the capacity to choose the traits of their child to allow them to make, um, “The Perfect Baby.” The WSJ article, titled “A Baby, Please. Blond, Freckles — Hold the Colic”, describes precisely what McGee predicted in 1997, yes more than 10 years ago, parents would want to be able to do, what he calls the “under the hood”

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Nearly a third of in vitro births involve twins or more. The government, along with professional associations, have been pushing fertility doctors to reduce that number, citing the disastrous health consequences that sometimes come with multiple births — infant mortality, low birth weights, long-term disabilities and thousands of dollars’ worth of medical care. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine, the association of fertility doctors, even adopted guidelines in 2008 encouraging the transfer of only one embryo for women under 35, and no more than two, except in extraordinary circumstances.

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The birth of octuplets to a California woman last week raised a boatload of issues that can distract us from the central ethical question posed by the case: How do we take children’s well-being into account in reproductive medicine? The American Society for Reproductive Medicine acknowledged in a 2004 report that fertility programs may withhold services when they can provide “well-substantiated judgments” that the child will not receive adequate care.

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“They will ask for extra things such as a holiday for their family – I think it is totally unacceptable for surrogates to hold couples over a barrel.” Carole believes legally binding contracts acceptable to UK courts are needed to stop surrogates keeping the baby or claiming extra money.

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More Than Two Decades After Baby M, More Couples Are Using Surrogate Mothers To Carry Their Embryos. Surrogacy today is a far cry from the late ’80s, when Americans were gripped by the Baby M case.

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The Vatican issued its most authoritative and sweeping document on bioethical issues in more than 20 years on Friday, taking into account recent developments in biomedical technology and reinforcing the church’s opposition to in vitro fertilization, human cloning, genetic testing on embryos before implantation and embryonic stem cell research. The Vatican says these techniques violate the principles that every human life — even an embryo — is sacred, and that babies should be conceived only through intercourse by a married couple.

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The limit on the number of pregnancies that can be created from the sperm of a single donor should be raised, fertility experts suggest.  Under UK regulations, the maximum number of families that can use sperm from the same donor is 10.

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MORE than 1m embryos created for fertility treatment in British clinics have been destroyed over the past 14 years, government figures have shown. The Department of Health data show that 2,137,924 embryos were created using IVF between 1991 and 2005, but about 1.2m were never used.

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Many children conceived by donor sperm have grown up angry and confused, and want a debate on their conception. Little is known about the effects on the children where parents tell them. Professor Blyth recently conducted a study involving 16 UK families who had disclosed: “The study showed that parents can tell their children and it doesn’t wreck the family,” says Professor Blyth.

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