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Designer babies! Coming to a hospital near you. Why pray to God when you can be God.

Seriously, the ethical issues are so immense that it boggles the mind.

I agree, Niraj!

I cannot believe where this thing could end up if allowed to continue unrestricted. Think about it - if your kid needed a perfectly matched organ instead of stem cells, would you still go ahead and create a baby just to harvest that organ from the baby?

Heard this very topic on a Radio talk show this morning and its preposterous! This actually could have been a Robin Cook novel, but sadly truth is stranger than fiction.

Nope, I don’t get what’s wrong with that. If you had another child who could donate an organ to save a dying child, would you not do it? Would you rather that the baby die? If it is ok to ask a living child to donate an organ, why is it not ok to have a child in order to donate an organ?

Sure there is a minor risk involved for the donor baby. But isn’t that a small price to pay for the much improved odds for the dying child? Besides, with more stem cell research, we might even just be able to grow the organ with no baby involved.

And from the article: The advantages of doing it this way, is that it is not an invasive procedure for the child whose cells are used,” says Taranissi. This is because stem cells from the child’s umbilical cord are used. If an existing sibling were a tissue-match, they would have to have cells taken from their bone marrow.
Isn’t that actually better than a surgically invasive procedure on a child?

Niraj, these are not designer babies. They are regular babies who are really valuable because they have stem cells in abundance. Nobody is trying to design anything here. Don’t paranoify an already confused topic.

More stem cell research, not less. Peace out :)

Kingsley, there are different kinds of stem cells to be worked with. For example, if Dallas had a public cord blood bank, I would donate my baby’s cord blood so that stem cells can be harvested from the blood and help research.

What I have a problem with is the fact babies are indeed being designed, since they are being with the sole purpose in their life to be donors. Right now we might be using them only for non-invasive procedures - how soon before they are used for organ harvest as long as the technology exists? As long as the line is crossed in small increments, what might not seem as a big deal initially might turn out to have hugely negative implications.

See the babies aren’t being “designed”. These babies are no different from babies had for other purposes. Is being a donor any less a “purpose” than being an accident? Would the baby’s parents love it less for donating organs to its sibling?

Your argument that this might turn out bad eventually doesn’t mean we should stop saving lives now. “Organ harvesting”, when it eventually happens, will not be about having babies, grabbing their organs and tossing them out - that would be a crime under most existing laws. It will become possible to grow organs out of stem cells - this is what we are working towards. And even if it was legal (which it is not) do you seriously think people will discard their own flesh and blood after harvesting an organ?

Again, the non-invasive procedure is a huge improvement over the earlier invasive procedures. Before it was possible to harvest stem cells, people would try to have children the regular way, and would have only a 1 in 5 chance of producing a possible tissue donor. Note that people where anyway trying to do this, and the stem cell process only improves their odds of coming out ahead, nothing more. And then, they would have to surgically extract non-stem tissue for transplantation.

BTW, I’m not very familiar with stem cell research but I was under the impression that they are so valuable because they can develop into any kind of cells. But like I said, I don’t know enough about it.

PS: I really should get my blog running again

my 4 cents
keep an open mind.
get some education on the matter.
do not rely on mainstream media for scientific discourse.
having an opinion is great, but if you want to be taken seriously, read a medical journal and keep yourself informed.
specifically, learn what stem cell research entails and how it is accomplished.
if you choose not to learn about such matters, then your opinion is as good as someone who cannot read and/or think for themselves.

Dear Shanti: believe me you are not alone in feeling the horrible reality behind such manipulation. It’s evil, no doubt, dangerous and sick. As a Mexican Catholic, I speak for what I know, and believe me that the immense mayority of the 1.1 billion Catholics in the world are very much opposed to all this kind of genetic manipulation and experiments, and I’m sure that other people in other faiths will see it in a similar light. Your comment was great :)

Shanti,

I remember reading an article in Reader’s Digest in which the parents go for another child to save the elder one.And, I cannot see anything wrong in it.

Of course it is justified.You are trying to save your kid. and, the parents are not going to love the second child less. If they love the first one so much as to do anything to save it, why not the younger one?

I have a younger sister and from what I know of her, I don’t think either of us would feel bad when we come to know that we were conceived to save the other. Come to think, I would rather be proud of my parents if they can do such a thing.

I have been sick in my life and I have seen what the parents go through when their kid is dying and they can’t do anything about it.

Why, one reason my sister was given birth is that nobody was sure I would survive.She has absolutely no problems with that fact!

One thing I agree with you is, it should not be like, the child cannot be a donor, so I will terminate it.But I think the technology guarantees a match,, again, I am not sure…

Anu

I agree with Kingsley here. (And I very much agree that he better get cracking on his blog!!)

Let the research go ahead. Let parents decide about their children. If Shantis or Miguels or Catholics don’t like it, they have the freedom as parents not to go in for the procedure. If the Kinglseys and Yazads (and Ravis) like the procedure, then we and our spouses should have the freedom to use it. I think parents are the final arbiters of what’s good for their children (not a “Hillary style village” or the govt). The only exception is when parents try to physically harm the child in some way.

I agree with you Shanti. Our children have stopped being ‘gifts’ and started being ‘gets’.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, we’re going to be wrestling with more and more issues like this every year, probably for the rest of all our lives. :mad: