Related News
Home » Opinion » Foreign Views
'Test-tube babies,' elderly moms and thorny bioethics
By Peter Singer |
January 16, 2009, Friday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
LOUISE Brown, the first person to be conceived outside a human body, turned 30 last year.
The birth of a "test-tube baby," as the headlines described in vitro fertilization, was highly controversial at the time.
Leon Kass, who subsequently served as chair of President George W. Bush's Council on Bioethics, argued that the risk of producing an abnormal infant was too great for an attempt at IVF ever to be justified.
Some religious leaders also condemned the use of modern scientific technology to replace sexual intercourse, even when sex could not lead to conception.
Since then, some 3 million people have been conceived by IVF, enabling otherwise infertile couples to have the child they longed for.
The risk of having an abnormal child through IVF has turned out to be no greater than when parents of a similar age conceive though sexual intercourse.
However, because many IVF practitioners transfer two or three embryos at a time to improve the odds of a pregnancy occurring, twins and higher multiple births are more common, and carry some additional risk.
Some religious people object to IVF on several grounds, including the fact that many embryos are created in the process, and few survive.
This outcome is not, however, very different from natural conception, for the majority of embryos conceived by sexual intercourse also fail to implant in the uterine wall, with the woman often not even knowing that she was ever "pregnant."
A better objection to IVF than a religious one is that in a world with millions of orphaned or unwanted children, adoption is a more ethical way of having a child.
If that is the argument, however, why should we single out couples who use IVF?
Why not, for example, criticize Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, the Arkansas state couple who recently had their 18th child?
In many countries, the ethical debate is not about IVF itself, but the limits of its use.
Last November, Rajo Devi, a 70-year-old Indian woman, became the world's oldest mother, thanks to IVF.
She and her 72 year-old husband have, she says, longed for a child through 55 years of marriage. Her husband's sperm appears to have been used, but news reports are unclear about the source of the egg.
Some will find it grotesque to become a mother at an age when most women are grandmothers, but the more significant question is what kind of care such children will have if their parents die or become incapable of rearing them.
Like many people in rural India, Devi lives in an extended family with other relatives, so she is confident that there would be others to bring up her child if necessary.
But, as this example suggests, the impact of parental age on a child's welfare will vary from one culture to another.
Becoming a mother at 70 is more acceptable for someone living in a joint family than it would be for Western couples living in their own home without close relatives or friends nearby.
(The author is professor of bioethics at Princeton University. The views expressed are his own. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2009. www.project-syndicate.org.)
The birth of a "test-tube baby," as the headlines described in vitro fertilization, was highly controversial at the time.
Leon Kass, who subsequently served as chair of President George W. Bush's Council on Bioethics, argued that the risk of producing an abnormal infant was too great for an attempt at IVF ever to be justified.
Some religious leaders also condemned the use of modern scientific technology to replace sexual intercourse, even when sex could not lead to conception.
Since then, some 3 million people have been conceived by IVF, enabling otherwise infertile couples to have the child they longed for.
The risk of having an abnormal child through IVF has turned out to be no greater than when parents of a similar age conceive though sexual intercourse.
However, because many IVF practitioners transfer two or three embryos at a time to improve the odds of a pregnancy occurring, twins and higher multiple births are more common, and carry some additional risk.
Some religious people object to IVF on several grounds, including the fact that many embryos are created in the process, and few survive.
This outcome is not, however, very different from natural conception, for the majority of embryos conceived by sexual intercourse also fail to implant in the uterine wall, with the woman often not even knowing that she was ever "pregnant."
A better objection to IVF than a religious one is that in a world with millions of orphaned or unwanted children, adoption is a more ethical way of having a child.
If that is the argument, however, why should we single out couples who use IVF?
Why not, for example, criticize Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, the Arkansas state couple who recently had their 18th child?
In many countries, the ethical debate is not about IVF itself, but the limits of its use.
Last November, Rajo Devi, a 70-year-old Indian woman, became the world's oldest mother, thanks to IVF.
She and her 72 year-old husband have, she says, longed for a child through 55 years of marriage. Her husband's sperm appears to have been used, but news reports are unclear about the source of the egg.
Some will find it grotesque to become a mother at an age when most women are grandmothers, but the more significant question is what kind of care such children will have if their parents die or become incapable of rearing them.
Like many people in rural India, Devi lives in an extended family with other relatives, so she is confident that there would be others to bring up her child if necessary.
But, as this example suggests, the impact of parental age on a child's welfare will vary from one culture to another.
Becoming a mother at 70 is more acceptable for someone living in a joint family than it would be for Western couples living in their own home without close relatives or friends nearby.
(The author is professor of bioethics at Princeton University. The views expressed are his own. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2009. www.project-syndicate.org.)
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
