Donating embryos should be like donating organs

IVF is legal. The couples involved are not required to use all of the viable embryos. They should be able to choose what becomes of the 'left over' ones.

They can choose the gift of life. Letting someone else use their embryos is much like donating an organ to someone who will die without it. The 'next of kin' make this decision all the time.

They can choose to contribute to science. Research and education depend on these special bequests.

They can choose to do nothing.

We should encourage people to adopt actual living children who need homes before we encourage people to adopt frozen embryonic hypothetical children. After all, a frozen embryo can remain in that state for years, maybe even decades, but children who are waiting for adoption have immediate needs.

:sarcasm:

People who have excess embryos are clearly not looking for more children. I do believe they have the right to determine what becomes of their embryos.

I agree that there needs to be adoption education. There are many older children who need homes. Older children are not for everybody though. Some people desperately want the full experience, and who are we to judge them for that. They want babies.

My parents took in foster children after I graduated from high school. They were all teenagers, and they should have come with danger pay. One kid's mother had held him over a fire when he was 3 to dry him off (she was a drug user.) He was scarred both physically and emotionally. He and his brother were both put in foster care together and responded completely differently.

The older boy totally bonded with their foster parents. He thrived. Keith didn't. He was there until he was 12 and they just couldn't cope with him anymore. He was 16 by the time he got to us.

He wet the bed. He went to court more than he went to school. He stole from us. He f*#cked his girlfriend in the middle of the backyard in broad daylight. He'd get so drunk that his girlfriend would just push him out of her car onto the street in front of our house. He pulled a knife on my dad, and then had the audacity to complain about 'prison food' the next day at dinner.

My parents were experienced parents. They had 5 kids between them. They'd dealt with a blended family. I was a pretty good kid, but my brothers tested their every limit. They almost got a divorce over Keith.

I know this is an extreme case. Not every child waiting for a home is this troubled. Many just need love and a family of their own. But it's not the case for every child. Some have behavioural problems, some have special needs. These kids need extraordinary parents, not everyone could cope.

I'm not talking about people who go through IVF, though they also should be encouraged to adopt, but rather people who are considering acquiring unused embryos.

There are a number of babies available for adoption, particularly babies of color, and yet babies of color have a longer wait for a home than white babies. Some people would rather wait for a white infant, or even go IVF, rather than adopt a baby of color, and I think we can (and should!) judge people for that.

I hope you're aware that IVF is no guarantee a child won't have physical or behavioral problems. In fact, many behavioral problems of children have a biological component, such as autism or schizophrenia. Children, even ones genetically related to their parents, come with lots of risk and little guarantee.

There are MANY, MANY babies in need of homes. Recently, I met a woman who had adopted two babies within two years. She said, there was not much of a wait at all, because both her babies were of mixed race.

My neighbor, adopted a mixed race baby and only had to wait 13 months! (Pregnancy is almost 10 months and it usually takes several tries). The longest part of the process for her and her husband was the 12 month long home study.

Do you have any facts/stats to back up your assertion? It sounds as though you are claiming that only older children are available. Granted, there are more older children available for adoption, but in my state, there are many, many babies available as well.

Some people just aren't crazy about babies of color apparently...

I've just read/heard from many sources over the years that older children or children with special needs are much harder to place. I know in the town where I grew up, that older foster children were harder to place. We had that right from the social workers.

I couldn't even begin to speak knowledgeably about race issues in the BC adoption scene. There isn't the same undercurrent of racism here in general. I do recall seeing a news story about how they prefer to put babies with parents of the same race. The focus of the story was Native issues.

I think mixed race babies are the cutest thing - they don't look so much like space aliens. lol

...once a child reaches toddler stage, he or she becomes very hard to place. Toddlers aren't that old, IMHO.

The problems is, that there are prospective adoptive parents that are racist and refuse to take a baby of color. White babies are more in demand, as there are more white people, many of whom will only adopt a white baby. The point is, there is NOT a long wait for a baby of color.

It is illegal for Social workers to practice "race matching."

The Multiethnic Placement Act (MEPA), passed in 1994 and amended in 1996, was designed to shorten the length of time children waited in the foster care system for adoption by removing race, culture, and ethnic background as a barrier to placement.
###
Concerned about the impact of this policy on children waiting for families and for its broader message about racism in our society, organizations such as the National Committee to End Racism and the NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR ADOPTION moved to action. They published studies, advocated with the courts and state legislatures, and testified before Congress, urging that federal law be changed to ban discrimination in adoption.

One U.S. senator took on this cause as his own personal mission, vowing to see the law changed before he left office. And, true to his word, Senator Howard M. Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) succeeded in attaching his bill, the Metzenbaum Multiethnic Placement Act, to another law moving through the Senate. His bill essentially required that those receiving federal funds could not delay or deny the placement of a child in adoption or foster care because of considerations of race or ethnicity.

MEPA-IEP has been in place since 1996, but discrimination still continues, according to Senator Metzenbaum, who testified about the need for HHS to enforce his law in a 1998 hearing before the Human Resources Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee.

As of this writing, MEPA-IEP does not apply to the INDIAN CHILD WELFARE ACT, a piece of federal legislation that allows discrimination in placement of children who tribes wish to claim jurisdiction over. Only children with Indian "ancestry" are deprived of the protections of MEPA-IEP.

sensible ideas...which is probably why they haven't been implemented yet...Just kidding...

But they are great ideas. They NEED to be implemented. Real human lives could be impacted in some very good ways.

choose all the other alternatives, short of raising them for food? Really, why pretend to have "restrictions" on destroying them for scientific purposes when purposeless destruction is an alternative?

I hate when our laws aren't consistent.

by these idiots.

Sickening how little they manage to use the brains God gave them, really.

How many of those applauding the *cough* snowflake kids, have actually agreed to donate their organs to save someone who may die without a heart transplant, a kidney transplant?

Not many, I'd bet. All life is precious. *snort* Depends upon which end of the barrel you're looking down, I guess.

So many anti-choicers consider adoption out of the question for their families.

The couples involved should be the only ones who decide what to do with their embryos.

By donating it to research which will help SAVE LIVES!

That's what I would do. I'm an organ donor and it should be OUR CHOICE what to do with OUR BODY parts. The State has no right interfering in this. They do not own our cells.

The State should only interfere to the point to set regulations to ensure organs are not sold and sanitation/safe disposal rules are set.

and give them to as many people as possible. My AB- organs could be a God send to someone on the list who didn't have much hope.

I can't be comfortable with the idea of being a cadaver in a medical school somewhere. There's nothing wrong with it. I just don't like it. I blame my high school lab partner and the things he did to our fetal pig.

I think people should be able to choose what becomes of their embryos.

People SELL their blood or eggs& sperm but people cannot DONATE their fertilized eggs to research? WTF?

There are ads in the paper offering 3-4k for unfertilized eggs. Personally, I wouldn't feel comfortable doing that, but I would feel comfortable donating a fertilized or unfertilized egg for research. These eggs would never become fetuses. Why NOT?

I really don't understand how they continue to get away with inconsistent and illogical arguments.

it doesn't resolve the matter of whether certain choices are ethical.

I think choice in this context is just about as knotty a problem as choice on abortion.

This is another example of the problem of how having the capacity to do something demands resolution of the question of whether someone should have the right to do something.

donating an embryo for research that would otherwise be destroyed?

What is it unethical about first using it to save lives, before it's destroyed?

Certainly the concept of least damage is important within our society. And, the idea of getting some good out of an otherwise "worthless" death is consistent with that principle.

But your argument doesn't address other questions.

I'm not an ethicist but I'll offer issues for you to consider in the interest of trying to put you on a path of interrogation that will improve your argument. If you are going to prevail in your support of embryonic stem cells you must anticipate objections that will be raised against it.

Your argument emphasizes embryos as scientifically/medically valuable salvagable tissue. Many other Americans see "excess" embryos as being something more. Some Americans consider these embryos as individual persons.

I appreciated that others, and apparently you don't. But, you must admit that a sizable fraction of Americans do or can be led to believe that. To prevail in a debate on the topic of harvesting and stem cells salvaged from embryos you do need to be ready with a counter argument.

From the point of view that embryos are people there are obvious ethical questions.

Can a person own another person? You say they should be able to donate their embryos. Do you mean "their" as in that's "their" dog? Ownership of one person by another is arguably slavery. Is it _ever_ right to own someone?

Is it ethical to terminate the life of another whose interest is not protected? As demonstrated by abortion rights the answer in American law is yes within conditions. But ethics are not necessarily a matter of the possibilities provided by law. The ethical nature of terminating another person's life is in controversy.

Is it ethical to terminate a person in order to sell their parts or products? An embryo might be donated but its cell lines might later be traded. Certainly the interest of the pharmaceutical industry in stem cells goes well beyond finding cures. The industries want to sell those cures for profit.

I have reservations about IVF. For instance, I could never have 5 or 6 embryos implanted - hoping that one would take. If they all took, I would be in a bad situation. I could not selectively 'reduce' them.
I also wouldn't be comfortable making a bunch of 'extra' ones.

I'm a pragmatist. IVF is legal and widely accepted. That ship has sailed. Extra embryos are a byproduct of this practice. How do we best handle this situation.

People are not property. People donate their loved one's organs all the time. They do not own them, but they are their next of kin.

IMO the regulations should include:
Requiring next of kin to sign permissions/
Requiring the institutions to submit summaries to the FDA concerning number, sources and dispositions of the human embryos involved.
Have all the products and processes reviewed for bioethical considerations prior to awarding patents or undertaking human drug trials.

"worthless death" in reference to not implanting frozen embryos
"terminate a person" to refer to destroying an embryo

An embryo is NOT a person and ONLY 14% of Americans oppose all abortion. The large majority of Americans DO NOT BELIEVE that all abortion should be outlawed. Your beliefs are in line with the fringe right.

End of conversation, you are obviously a prolifer who thinks like a fundie.

the topic. And that person recognizes the value of considering where the other arguments might come from.

And BTW ad hominem attacks on a fellow DU'er may lower your blood pressure but do not make a logical contribution to the discussion.

People confuse embryos with people out of ignorance and through the lies of the religious right. The best answer to that isn't to entertain anyone's delusions but to instead educate them.

As a zoologist, I think an embryo is in the biological context an individual H. sapiens.

I recognize that human-ness and personhood are considered by many to be something different than that.

The differences between an individual H. sapiens, an individual human and an individual persons has legal implications. It also creates both sematic problems that muddy communication and rhetorical problems because such distinctions are arguable owing in large part that as distinctions they are arbitrary, changed over time, and are largely subjective--sometimes seemingly context dependent.

An embryo is to a human as an acorn is to an oak.

why the "lives" of these embryos are worth more than the lives of people suffering from diseases that could potentially be cured by use/reasearch of stem cells is beyond me.

Eggsactly what I was thinking, and that is no yoke.

I agree with you, yvr girl.

Can mean donating embryos to infertile couples, or saving an existing life through research. One of my cousin's best friends died of cystic fibrosis when she was 10. Awful, awful way to die.

Other that that, you're exactly right: the parents should be allowed to choose.

I don't devalue science. I have a brother who has CP and an uncle who would have died from Parkinson's Disease if cancer hadn't taken him first.

It's hard to even calculate how much our lives have been changed by medical research in the last 50 years.

Still, many people don't want to become laboratory experiments. I can respect that choice.

Their parents do.