A Crazy World....

During the week a number of developments have caused us to think that the world is really getting crazier...

Following on from the proposal that women be able to sell their eggs for embryonic stem cell research, British scientists have announced that they have created human sperm from embryonic stem cells.

Scientists in Newcastle, UK claimed it "could eventually help men with fertility problems to father a child." 

However, the notion of producing sperm from stem cells has always been promoted as a way of 'doing away with men' - previous reports have said it could perhaps to be used by a lesbian couple who want to have a child but don't want to have a man involved.

They may think that this may get over the moral dilemma of a child not knowing both their biological parents - however, the raising of the child by a mother and a father is also important.

Just this week an article was printed in a Melbourne paper about the increased risks involved with elective caesarean births (article not online - see list of increased risks at ICAN).

Often as a society we embark on a course of action without understanding the possible adverse consequences. The scientists have no idea what the physical, emotional or psychological consequences of the current proposal to create human sperm might be for the possible children that might be created this way in the future.

Thankfully the experiments are still just that at this stage - experiments.

At this stage there have not been any sperm used to create embryos for implantation in the womb. The scientists noted that the technique has been previously developed using mice - but the embryos that were created all died within a short time ... we can pray that the creation of children in this way this is something that God will not allow.

The research raises other important ethical issues. The BBC reported that Josephine Quintavalle from Comment on Reproductive Ethics (Corethics) said: "This is an example of immoral madness. Perfectly viable human embryos have been destroyed in order to create sperm over which there will be huge questions of their healthiness and viability.

"It's taking one life in order to perhaps create another. I'm very much in favour of curing infertility but I don't think you can do whatever you like."

That's the issue - sometimes it seems that scientists (and society) do these things because they can, not because they should do them or ought to do them. Often they don't even consider God's view of the sanctity of life.

Media Report: 
Scientists claim sperm 'first'  - BBC, 7 July 2009.
"Scientists in Newcastle claim to have created human sperm in the laboratory in what they say is a world first. The researchers believe the work could eventually help men with fertility problems to father a child...."