In Vitro Fertilization
This is a paper that outlines the morality issue behind in vitro fertilization. It has 12 sources.
As scientific progress advances more rapidly than the ability of mankind to assimilate and comprehend its influence on life concerns, fields such as Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) are turning heretofore basic issues like procreation into complex ethical and moral dilemmas.
In 1978, with the birth of Louise Brown, the first child conceived through in vitro fertilization (IVF), man finally realized his power to create, not passively through instinctual processes but consciously and actively. [Daar 1999] The desire to have children is strong in the human heart and infertility is a serious and painful issue. There are however more aspects to having a child than mere desire and the means by which the child is created is amongst the most important. Over the past few decades science has allowed individuals biologically otherwise incapable of reproducing, to make or have children by artificial methods such as in vitro fertilization.
The natural act of procreation lessened in consequence with man's ability to use various techniques to achieve his goal. The steps involved in the reproductive process became insignificant, it was the ultimate end that became important, and that these were irrevocably interlinked was invalidated. Moral codes and values needed to be formatted to cope with this new circumstance of human existence, and law and government policies were not prepared. Bioethics is a recent field that studies the latest social and moral issues modern science produces but it still has a long way to go before it can define and regulate what still are the mysteries of life no matter how familiar; such as birth.
InVitro fertilization
Infertility affects about 4.9 million couples in the United States, or one in every twelve. Approximately one-third of infertility is due to causes in the female. IVF was originally developed to help women whose fallopian tubes were blocked and for whom reconstructive surgery was impossible or had already been unsuccessful. The basic techniques aimed at optimizing conditions for fertilization of an ovum and sperm outside the female reproductive tract and the facilitating embedding of the fertilized egg in the uterus. [Monash 2001]
Medications are used initially to stimulate the ovaries to produce multiple follicles that will contain many eggs. In what is called a "fresh cycle," the eggs are retrieved and transferred to the laboratory. They are placed, along with sperm, in a special culture medium that encourages fertilization and growth of high-quality embryos in just a few hours. [Monash 2001]
Following fertilization, the oocyte becomes a zygote, and cell division commences. It is at the 6-to-8-cell stage that the embryo is transferred back into the uterus. As multiple embryos have been produced to increase chances of yield a limited number of high quality embryos are transferred, while the others are usually cryopreserved, or frozen, for future use in a "frozen embryo transfer" (FET). [Monash 2001]
Sometimes a "donor cycle, " is required when the woman is not able to produce her own eggs, or their quality will not support fertilization, implantation and pregnancy. Ova are then retrieved from a woman who has undergone ovarian stimulation and fertilized with sperm from the husband of the recipient couple or a donor. The resulting embryos are then transferred to the recipient female, whose body has been prepared for implantation and pregnancy. [Monash 2001] Nearly 0.2% of American and 1% of British babies are being born after IVF and there are now more than 300,000 IVF babies worldwide. [Monash 2001]
Literature Review
Assisted reproduction by IVF has many aspects and produces various complex ethical issues. The treatment itself has social, emotional and financial ramifications. It affects the parents and the child conceived, and is associated with risks such as medication side effects, multiple births or multifetal reduction to limit the number of pregnancies after successful embryo transfer. The outcome of the multiple embryos produced for the process but not necessarily used to fulfill their potential of creating a human being is an important issue. So are various social issues such as genetic screening, and 'designer babies' made to order. Religion also complicates a process that began with the best of intentions however naive.
Fate of the Embryo
The decision on how the many embryos produced during the IVF cycle are to be disposed of depends on whether one views them as a potential human beings or just a group of cells. Like
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