The bottom of the slippery slope
(hat tip: Thinklings)
According to “Britain’s highest appeal court” it is now permissible to genetically screen embryos created via in vitro fertilization (IVF) to determine whether there is a tissue match for another child with a serious illness.
CBC News on MSN reports the details:
The case stems from Raj and Shahana Hashmi’s desire to conceive a child whose tissue is a match for their six-year-old son Zain, who has a rare blood disorder.
The couple conceived twice naturally after Zain’s birth. One fetus was discovered to be carrying the same blood disorder and the couple aborted it. Shahana gave birth to another child, who was not a match for Zain.
After the 2003 ruling, the couple went through fertility treatments to create a child whose tissue matched Zain’s, but Shahana had a miscarriage.
Understandably, these parents love their son and want to do whatever they can to help him. I don’t know much about blood disorders, but given the lengths they are going to, one would assume the condition is terminal.
Rather than have a second child that looked to have the same disease, however, they killed it in the womb.
Now they seek to find a genetic match from a batch of artificially produced embryos, one of which has already been miscarried. Assuming they do bring another suitable one to term, what becomes of the rest?
And what of the child who has been genetically selected to be a donor of some type for his or her brother? Is there as much value attached to its life as to the one they are born to save?
In this tragic story are several examples of the bottom of the slippery slope rushing up to meet us.
Had the second child been born, and had it actually had the same malady as the first, presumably, as much effort would have been undertaken to save its life. Instead it was prevented from taking its first breath. That was the only difference between the second child and the first that they so desperately want to save.
Meanwhile, who knows how many disposable human beings are being created for the sake of finding that match, whose worth has already been determined to be measured by the degree to which they are able to help their sibling.
This is a frighteningly utilitarian view of human life; all the more so because it is not some ivory-tower academician making impersonal pronouncements, but an actual mother and father culling their potential offspring for a specific purpose.
No doubt they view their efforts as an expression of love for their gravely ill child. That is perhaps the most chilling aspect of this story.
