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U.K. pro-life leader calls for ban on all IVF procedures

The release of another study showing connections between artificial procreation techniques and higher instances of genetic defects has prompted a call from a leading pro-life leader in Britain for an outright ban on in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and related interventions, reports Hilary White, LifeSiteNews.com.

“IVF amounts to the manufacture of human beings,” said John Smeaton, director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children.

Pro-life opposition to IVF does not imply denying the humanity of children so conceived. “However, it's vital to oppose IVF as a way of conceiving children since it turns human beings into commodities to be brought to birth or discarded at will,” Smeaton explained.

A large-scale study by researchers at the Maternite Port Royal Hospital in Paris recently showed that birth defects are more than twice as common in IVF-conceived children than was previously thought.

Lead researcher Geraldine Viot told the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Genetics, “We found a major congenital malformation in 4.24% of the children, compared with the 2-3% that we had expected from previous published studies."

“This higher rate was due in part to an excess of heart diseases and malformations of the uro-genital system. This was much more common in boys. Among the minor malformations, we found a five times higher rate of angioma, benign tumors made up of small blood vessels on or near the surface of the skin. These occurred more than twice as frequently in girls than in boys.”

The study involved data from 33 French IVF centres on more than 15,000 births from 2003 to 2007.

Viot added, “Given that our study is the largest to date, we think that our data are more likely to be statistically representative of the true picture.”

Viot also mentioned that in discussing risks with clients, most IVF doctors will only bring up the risk of genetic malformations if asked about them specifically. She called for greater access to information for artificial procreation clients.

Ethicists who are generally supportive of artificial procreation techniques often cite the problem of “informed consent” for clients who may not be given full information or understand the information they do receive. Smeaton, however, said that the whole practice is unethical from its first principles, since human embryos are full human beings, with full human rights, from the single-cell stage.

“The practice of IVF assumes that our offspring may be produced in the laboratory, and that the role of the natural mother, in safeguarding with her own body the welfare of the embryo from conception, may legitimately be transferred to other people."

“IVF thus makes embryos vulnerable, exposing them to the risks of being discarded, frozen or experimented upon.”

Recently released statistics from the UK’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), the government body regulating IVF, show that between 1991 and 2005 there were 2,137,924 embryos discarded, frozen for storage, selectively aborted, miscarried or used in destructive experiments. The HFEA reports that in the same period, only 109,469 children were born from these procedures.

Dr. John Fleming, SPUC's consultant on bioethics, wrote recently, “There is no such thing as a form of IVF which respects life. Human life is disrespected in the embryos and in their parents by virtue of the process itself, namely the gestation of a human being outside of his natural environment.”

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TAGS: United Kingdom IVF procedures genetic defects John Smeaton in vitro fertilisation

[06/21/2010]

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