A report published recently by researchers from USC, UCLA and elsewhere raises serious questions about the benefits, risks and ethics of a new service that allows in-vitro fertilization patients to select embryos with the goal of choosing healthier and even smarter children.
The multinational research team describes the limitations of what the authors call “embryo selection based on polygenic scores” — or ESPS — “and warns of the risk that patients and even in-vitro fertilization clinicians may form the impression that ESPS is more effective and less risky than it is,” according to a USC statement.
The report’s authors highlight that since the same gene often influences many different traits, ESPS designed to select for one trait can lead to the unintentional selection of adverse traits. They also warn about the potential of ESPS to alter population demographics, exacerbate socioeconomic inequalities and devalue certain traits.
If ESPS continues to be available to IVF patients, the researchers call on the Federal Trade Commission to develop and enforce standards for responsible communication about the service. The authors of the report published in the New England Journal of Medicine also call for a society-wide conversation about the ethical use of the technology and whether it should be regulated.
Multiple companies are now working with IVF clinics to offer ESPS to patients who want to select an embryo with a lower chance than other embryos of developing, as an adult, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, inflammatory bowel disease, Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia.
One company also offers ESPS for selecting embryos according to their predicted educational attainment, household income and cognitive ability. The founder of another company has not ruled out someday offering ESPS in some countries for skin color or above-average cognitive ability, according to the report.
Full story at Santa Monica Patch.
What’s wrong with that? I mean, once you admit the permissibility of IVF, which this society has done, what’s wrong with selecting the highest quality embryo you can? There’s no coherent moral case to be made against it, if IVF is permitted. This is what godlessness entails.
Having IVF from some man other than ones husband is just another form of fornication or adultery also. Let’s call it what it is. Some women have IVF from their husband but many do not.
IVF is always immoral.
Yes it is according to Church teaching, Anonymous, but it is worse if the man used is not a husband, two serious sins instead of one.
Regarding my last post: and do not compare the virgin birth of Christ to IVF as that was an “Act of God”, and God can do anything he wants. IVF is an act of man, and we cannot do whatever we want without serious consequences.
Maybe the outcry would be louder if they screened out the homosexual embryos.
IVF is a totally immoral process from beginning to end, Catholic moral teaching rightly rejects and condemns it.
My two nephews were born using IVF, so do you condemn them? They never should have existed?
No one is held responsible for the way they were conceived. They are still children of God. IVF is a illicit means that (sometimes) has a good end.
My niece may have used IVF to conceive but I am not sure. I know she had fertility issues and then gave birth to twins. Nobody is going to tell the aunt who actually believes what the Church teaches.
“My two nephews were born using IVF, so do you condemn them? They never should have existed?”
Where did anyone condemn the children? Do you condemn children conceived in rape?
Your innocent nephews are victims of “parents”, whoever they might be, who believe children are a commodity to be purchased.
Imagine the indignity of being told their existence is due to a woman agreeing to having her eggs harvested and fertilized in a petri dish with sperm collected from a man’s act of masterbation.
Your nephews have morally compromised parents whose behaviors will have long range negative repercussions.
The persons born from such procedures are innocent, though, as one is not responsible for ones parents’ actions. It can cause a great deal of problems for such children, though, as sometimes one man contributes to IVF in one area many, many times, which makes children born from such situations fearful that they might unknowingly marry a close relative. One man admitted on a secular radio station that he contributed to such procedures around a hundred times while going to college to get money.
That was all in the same area, and he actually said it was over a hundred. Can you imagine how many people were born in that area that were closely related and have no idea they are, even if only have those procedures worked.
Correction to last line: “if only half those procedures worked.
AnneT. It would be courteous if you could edit your comments before you posted them instead of after, as you so often do, rather than edit them after the fact. Ditto for thumbs up and thumbs down. Measure twice, cut once.
Your are right. My apologies. Mea culpa!