Not the first time a baby was born to save the life of another, Adam's birth was a medical milestone, marking the first time doctors used pre-implantation genetic analysis, a process that allowed them to choose Adam from 15 manufactured embryos. Only a few weeks after he was born, stem cells were taken from Adam's umbilical cord, and on Sept. 26, were transferred to his sister. Doctors will not know for weeks if the procedure was a success.
Lost in this beautiful human interest story are at least 15 embryos. So forgotten, in fact, in Newsweek's report on the case, that their writer simply rounds the total to “a dozen” embryos that were created in the process of the creation of Adam. Still almost completely overlooked is the fact that Adam was the result of the Nashes fifth try at in vitro fertilization. Presuming a dozen or 15 or so embryos were created each cycle (officials involved were unable to confirm the exact number when I asked), some 70 or so embryos were potentially created and discarded before Adam was chosen for implantation in Mrs. Nash.
The forgotten ones, sadly, are not an issue with the moral guardians of science. Bioethicists venture no farther than simply raising the concern that Adam Nash's birth may point to a slippery slope; that someday parents may elect to use the technology to predetermine eye color or athletic ability.
Dr. John Wagner, of the Stem Cell Institute of the University of Minnesota Medical School said last week, “We've opened a Pandora's box of ethical issues. I think the biggest concern is: where does this all end? It's a slippery slope. In the future, will we be wanting to select babies for other characteristics, such as height or intelligence? That cannot be done today, but these are concerns that have to be addressed.”
With the creation of Adam Nash, however, the slippery slope has arrived.
At least Wagner has some concerns about the future uses of the technology that brought Adam into the world. Dr. Charles Strom, who oversaw the conception of Adam Nash at the Reproductive Genetics Institute in Chicago, has no such reservations. He told the Associated Press, “People have babies for lots of reasons: to save a failing marriage, to work the family farm. I have absolutely no ethical problems with this whatsoever.”
A professor of medical ethics and practicing pediatrician, Dr. Joel Frader told salon.com: “Some people object to this destroying of the embryo. They believe it is somehow harmful to those entities, those bundles of cells. I don't buy that. I don't believe an eight-cell entity deserves protections. If you identify that the embryo has a serious disease, I have no moral qualms to not use that embryo and permit it to go on to be a baby. Once you have a baby, it seems to me that it's a whole different circumstance and one has different kinds of obligations toward that live born baby.”
It gets better. Another bioethicist, Jeffrey Kahn, director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Bioethics, commented, “You could say it's quickly becoming like buying a new car, where you decide which package of accessories you want. I suspect that it's only because we don't yet have the tests that we're not having parents asking for embryos without a predisposition to homosexuality, or for kids who will grow to more than six feet tall.”
Unfortunately, aside of the problem of bioethicists with little or no ethics, there is really no possibility of a dispassionate debate on these fundamental reproductive issues in the public square today. Stem-cell research, for instance, is a cause owned almost exclusively by Christopher Reeve and Michael J. Fox and other celebrities to whom your heart naturally goes out. But beyond their tragic stories on the TV news magazines and at congressional hearings, there are some crucial, basic ethical issues that need to be addressed. Namely, there’s an ever-increasing number of human lives the “miracles” of technology are creating and destroying, and which the population at large is completely ignoring.
Granted, they’re not cars being destroyed right off the showroom floor. But it seems like they should be worth at least a mention.
