Cloning to Bring Back a Child (MSNBCkKatherine Gordon of Great Falls, Mont, whose 17-year-old daughter, Emily, was killed by a drunk driver five years ago, says she became obsessed with bringing a part of her daughter back in some way
CASE 3 Cloning to Bring Back a Child (MSNBCkKatherine Gordon of Great Falls, Mont, whose 17-year-old daughter, Emily, was killed by a drunk driver five years ago, says she became obsessed with bringing a part of her daughter back in some way. Spurred on by the news of [the birth of the cloned sheep Dolly], she had her daughter’s cells frozen and stored for possible future cloning. "I started to spend all day researching 0n the Internet and contacting biologists," she recalls. “I really went off the deep end." Now she’s resigned herself to the fact that the technology probably won’t be available in time to help her bear Emily’s clone, as she’s now 42. But she says that if it were possible in the next couple of years, she would do it. “I know it wouldn’t be Emilyiit would be her twin sister," she says. “Emily was perfectishe was beautiful and smart, too, and most of that is genetic. Her predisposition was real kind. Even if the clone had some of her negative qualities that would be fine, too. I don’t know what the new person would be like, but she would have a good start in life."… . Dr. William Hurlbut, a bioethicist at Stanford University and member of President Bush’s Council on Bioethics, urges parents to look at cloning from the perspective of the child. “I don’t think anyone should have to live their life in the footsteps of someone else,” he says. "The baby may be held up in comparison with some idealized image of the lost child. It seems morbid and insensitive to the love of the child." But Gregory Pence, a pro-cloning bioethioist at the University ofAlabama, Birmingham, and author of “Who’s Afraid of Human Cloning?" defends that choice. "People have replacement children all the time. It’s as good a reason as any to have a child sexually. Why are people creating children anyway? To create a sense of family, someone to take care of them when they’re older. There are many self-centered reasons people have kids, parentsjust normally don’t have to [spell] out these reasons": lt Katharine Gordon could give birth to a clone of her deceased daughter, should she? is grief over the loss of a child a morally legitimate reason for wanting to clone him or her? is there a morally relevant difference between sexually producing a Child to replace a lost one and producing a child through Cloning for the same reason? Explain your answers, 3 Julia Sommerfeld, “Coveting a Clone," tiff-Ween], 2006.
CASE 1 The Fate of Frozen Embryos Abstract BACKGROUND. The moral status of the human embryo is particularly controversial in the United States, where one debate has centered on embryos created in excess at in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics. Little has been known about the disposal of these embryos. METHODS. We mailed anonymous, self-administered questionnaires to directors of 341 American IVF clinics. RESULTS. 217 of 341 clinics (64 percent) responded. Nearly all (97 percent) were willing to create and cryopreserve extra embryos. Fewer, but still a majority (59 percent), were explicitly willing to avoid creating extras. When embryos did remain in excess, clinics offered various options: continual cryopreservation for a charge (96 percent) or for no charge (4 percent), donation for reproductive use by other couples (76 percent), disposal prior to (60 percent) or following (54 percent) cryopreservation, and donation for research (60 percent) or embryologist training (19 percent). Qualifications varied widely among those personnel responsible for securing couples’ consent for disposal and for conducting disposal itself. Some clinics performed a religious or quasi-religious disposal ceremony. Some clinics required a couple’s participation in disposal; some allowed but did not require it; some others discouraged or disallowed it. CONCLUSIONS. The disposal of human embryos created in excess at American IVF clinics varies in ways suggesting both moral sensitivity and ethical divergence.* One study estimates that as many as 400,000 embryos remain frozen in fertility clinics in the United States; this survey tried to document what happens to them. If you were faced with trying to decide what to do with frozen embryos, which of the options described here would you choose? Why? Do you believe that parents should have a say in what happens to their embryos? Do you think embryos have a right to exist regardless of the parents’ wishes? Explain. Given that a frozen embryo is minute (comprising only two to four cells), do you think it merits a disposal ceremony? Why or why not? * Andrea D. Gurmankin, Dominic Sisti, and Arthur L. Caplan, "Embryo Disposal Practices in IVF Clinics in the United States," Politics and Life Sciences 22, no. 2 (August 2004): 3-8.
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