Ok.......So what happens with the 100,000 fertilized eggs?

[serryjw]

Should they not be used for a good cause to help mankind? I assume they are 'owned' by the woman that had Invitro. Does she have a say on what happens to them or do they just stay frozen for eternity?

[sniffa]

1. feed starving peopLes?

:shrug:

oh, i know. make a cLone army to fight the insurgents.

[TahitiNut]

12. Yep. Sorta like caviar.

:shrug:

[sniffa]

17. eh, i was thinking fried or paoched eggs

you need crackers for caviar.

[imenja]

2. Bush wants them adopted

Isn't that choice? Adopt the embryos but the right doesn't give a damn about the millions of children in foster care.

[Bouncy Ball]

3. Well, if a couple "own" fertilized eggs

for the purpose of IVF, they even had to fill out paperwork saying who gets custody in the case of their death. Then they have to pay x amount of dollars per year to keep them in cold storage in case they want more children.

If they decide they are done having children, the parents give up custody to the lab and the embryos can either be used for research or destroyed.

Seems silly to destroy them when we can learn something from them, doesn't it?

Which is one of the reasons my friends, who have three blastocysts in cold storage, voted for Kerry. They wanted stem cell research to go through for sure. They are about to have twins they conceived through IVF and are about 100% sure they do not want more children, so those three eight-celled balls will either be used for research (which they would prefer, but it is not likely) or destroyed.

In other words, yes, the parents DO have a say, but not if they stop paying the money to keep them in cold storage. If they do that, then they are usually destroyed. Or, I think, they can be donated to a couple who don't have eggs and/or sperm, but that's a rather rare situation.

All of this hand-wringing over "snowflake babies" is rather silly when you consider the fact that they consist of eight cells (and so are NOT babies, but simply have the potential to be, given all the right circumstances) and when you consider the fact that every month, countless early miscarriages occur naturally in women. No one is screaming and yelling on the floor of Congress about THAT, thank goodness, and it's no different.

[Cleita]

11. My understanding, but it could be flawed and any biologist can

jump in and correct me, is that the stem cell is removed and the nuclei is replaced with the DNA of another person. Then there are triggers that are implanted that will grow a kidney or liver, or whatever is needed, not a whole human being. The blastocyst is implanted in it's host and a new kidney, etc. are grown in place.

So the DNA of the original blastocyst is discarded, or if not used as a stem cell, or for implantation into the mother for a new baby, the whole blastocyst is discarded. Otherwise I guess you can refrigerate it for eternity. I think they found the secret to immortality here.

I really don't get the religious dilemma here unless they are claiming all life is sacred so therefore you can't kill anything. I mean this is where this can lead to. You would have to save your sperm and your eggs and refrigerate them. You couldn't kill bugs like fleas and ticks. You couldn't ever eat a steak. Someone should give the fundies a lesson in what life is exactly. Also, you would have to let people die who could be saved with a transplant of a stem cell that will grown the appropriate organ. And here you enter the paradox room.

Now all of us know what murder really is, so we don't need some nutjob explaining it to us.

[Bouncy Ball]

13. Yep, I guess all fundies need to become vegetarians

and watch where they step so they don't kill an ant or something.

[Cleita]

16. Oh, they couldn't even be vegetarians. Plants are living things too.

What they could do was gather up anything that died, even animal corpses, and eat that. I guess that would make them vultures, wouldn't it?

[serryjw]

18. I love the paradox

If I understand correctly we have TWO choices.
Let an existing human with the potential to be saved from research

VS

Save a blastocyst that is not yet 'alive'frozen for eternity OR

REPLACE the DNA( is this not playing GOD?)that will potentially make it a human

BTW, Buddhists DO THINK that ALL life is precious....even a roach!

[Special_Ed]

4. Just a few thoughts...

After a certain amount of time they are destroyed. So according to the fundamentalist point of view the in vitro clinics are engaging in abortion perse . Where are the Right to lifers on this? If it doesn't have a feeding tube stuck in it then I guess it just doesn't merit a protest and a national media circus!

If you have eggs in storage at a clinic there really is nothing to stop you from taking them out and then selling them to a foreign country already engaged in this research.

[leftchick]

5. Yes they are owned by the woman or couple and they have a say.

As someone who has stored frozen embryos before I can tell you it is a tough decision what to do with the "leftovers". I had these options after successfully having two boys two years apart through IVF and 5 frozen embryos left($250.00 a year to store them!). I could thaw them to try for a third pregnancy. Discard them. Donate to another couple. Or donate to a research facility. I am not sure if that last option is is still available.

After a lot of thought we decided to try for child number three. Personally I did think of them as my babies so I could not discard them. If I had had 30 of them I don't know, I probably would have donated some for research.

I did end up getting pregnant again but miscarried early.

[Al-CIAda]

6. Force those who had the procedure done to have each and every one of them!

:silly:

[serryjw]

10. Why would you say something like that?

How can we ever spread our word if you make silly statesments like that? You don't think some of these woman are liberals?

[Bouncy Ball]

14. Did you see the silly face icon in their post?

They were being sarcastic....

[ooglymoogly]

7. put them in reliquaries and worship them...sell them for indulgences

after all jesus came from an embrio....just not one that was discarded...but then that doesn't seem to matter to the murkin tali ban

[carpetbagger]

8. Well, if you watched Star Wars, episode 2...

I think we've found the solution to the draft.

[otohara]

9. Murder Them

of course, as some moran said in a LTTE today in our paper.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

15. Toilet? Meet Egg.