Non viable embryos?

[PureGrace]

Hello,

I was reading some background information, which dealt with the issue of cloning, for a paper I have to write for class within the next couple of weeks. The article mentioned that perhaps people in society were overly concerned about the particular cloning case in question becasue the clones produced were “non viable embryos”. According to the article, non viable embryos cannot grow into a baby because they were created by having several sperm fertilize one egg.

I am a bit confused…How can you have a human embryo that will not grow into a human being??? Like, obviously the embryo has to be alive…if it were not, its cells would be incapable of dividing…and it either has to be a human or not a human…an it had to be a human, because a non human does not arise from human gametes…

??? Maybe someone can help me understand this…I really can’t see this…???

Thanks,
Katherine

 

[vluvski]

I can’t really claim to understand this either. From what I know, I’d have to say the Church is probably vehementy against techniques that result in such non-viable embryos.

I don’t think they’re saying the embryo is not alive, or that it is not human, but that it would be incapable of growing to adolesence or adulthood- much like a child with severe birth defects may be miscarried, be still-born, or die minutes after birth.

However, just because death is imminent does not justify killing a human person, no matter how perverse the conditions under which the child was conceived.

But that’s just my best guess. I don’t really know for sure.

 

[lillysan]

This is often an argument that many biologists,geneticists, and Doctors etc. use to say that it is okay to use these embryos for whatever they want!!! The true issue is that if these embryos had never been made. I mean to say the geneticists, had never messed with nature (God) there would not be these “non-viable” human babies (which people who want to detach themselves from life call embryos), that has been deformed because scientists have not taken their job messing with human life seriously. I have also a lot of trouble believing that an egg was fertilized by more than one sperm??? I would like to know the details of how this happened. This is not natural at all unless the egg has been genetically changed or mutated which is also of course wrong. I have a lot of background in this and I think that you Proff or article doesn’t have all the specifics correct. Maybe you can send me a copy of the article. I would like to read it!!

 

[Thomas_More_1]

Not sure if this is what you’re talking about, but there is new research that suggest it maybe be possible to create stem cells that are embryo-like but they CANNOT develop into all tissues and they are fundamentally incapable of becoming persons. Many orthodox priests, theologians and bishops have said that such methods would be morally acceptable provided that you could be absolutely sure you weren’t creating any embryos, and certainly not destroying any.

On the other hand, if you are referring to embryos that are “not viable” because they are certain to die . . . . it would be absolutely immoral (without exceptions) to create such embryos.

 

[stbruno]

This was from Sat.9/17 Zenit.org link
zenit.org/english/
regarding babies, please go to link for entirety.
Fresh embryos

This past week, concern was expressed in Canada over the use of “fresh” embryos as a source of stem cells, reported the National Post on Tuesday. An article published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal warned that women are being encouraged to donate fresh, as opposed to “surplus,” frozen embryos left over from previous in-vitro fertilization treatments, to create stem cells.

The authors of the article, Dr. Jeffrey Nisker, of the University of Western Ontario, and Dr. Francoise Baylis, of Dalhousie University in Halifax, also warned that the women might be decreasing their chances of getting pregnant in the future.

As well, Baylis complained about the “surreptitious” way the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, a federal agency, quietly changed the rules on June 7 to explicitly allow stem-cell researchers to use fresh human embryos. Only two days later, a Toronto research team headed by Dr. Andras Nagy announced it was not only working with fresh embryos but had already used them to create Canada’s first human embryonic stem cells.

Jeffrey Nisker co-chaired Health Canada’s advisory committee on reproductive and genetic technology, which disbanded last year once the federal government passed the new law governing reproductive technology. He told the National Post: “Never for one moment did [the committee] imagine that a woman would ever be approached to give up a fresh embryo.” Nisker said the issue demands clarification and added that he thinks physicians who ask women to donate fresh embryos might be breaking the medical code of ethics.

Meanwhile, the scientist who created Dolly the sheep, Ian Wilmut, argued that human embryonic stem cells should be used, in order to save animals from being used in tests. The Scottish newspaper Herald reported Sept. 8 that Wilmut argued that this research would be “more ethical.”

In a speech at Glasgow University Vet School, Wilmut said that studying incurable human diseases by creating embryos and cloning them as cell lines would save “potentially many thousands of animals.”

Wilmut recently applied for a license to use embryonic stem cells to develop a cure for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Lou Gehrig’s disease, a motor-neuron disorder.

Eliminating the “unfit”
Tell me again, that we are not rapidly falling down into the abyss of denying the value of human life. I am praying all these experiments fail, fail, fail! Anything is possible with God. Never stop praying and spreading the Gospel of LIfe.