Next week, Barack Obama will be inaugurated as president of the United States. There will be parties, cameras, a ceremony, and a parade. The world will watch and celebrate. In politics, revolutions are clearly marked.Hat tip: Branford
Social revolutions that emerge from science, however, are often overlooked. One of those revolutions is happening right now, a week before Obama's inauguration, across the Atlantic Ocean.
"First baby tested for breast cancer form BRCA1 before conception born in UK," says the press release from University College London. "The first baby tested preconceptionally for a genetic form of breast cancer (BRCA1) has been born." The release quotes Paul Serhal, medical director of the hospital's Assisted Conception Unit: "This little girl will not face the specter of developing this genetic form of breast cancer or ovarian cancer in her adult life. The parents will have been spared the risk of inflicting this disease on their daughter. The lasting legacy is the eradication of the transmission of this form of cancer that has blighted these families for generations."
It's happy news. But let's take a closer look at the announcement, starting with the test "before conception." This baby was tested as an embryo in a dish. She was one of 11 such embryos made by injecting drugs in the mother to stimulate production of excess eggs, which were then fertilized with the father's sperm. Six of the embryos had the gene for breast cancer. Three more had "other abnormalities." All nine were "discarded." The other two were implanted, and one became this baby.
In sum, at least six human embryos were made and then thrown away because they failed a test. We now call such tests "preconception." This is the next step in our gradual devaluation of embryos. First, we said IVF embryos weren't pregnancies. That's technically correct: Pregnancy begins when the embryo implants in the womb. Then we called early embryos "pre-embryos" so we could dismantle them to get stem cells. That was technically incorrect, but we did it because it made us feel better. Now we're adjusting the word conception. Henceforth, testing of IVF embryos to decide which will live or die is preconception. Don't fret about the six eggs we fertilized, rejected, and flushed in selecting this baby. They were never really conceived. In fact, they weren't embryos. According to Serhal, each was just "an affected cluster of cells."
The entire article is available here.
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Comments:
The switch in the nomenclature was made in the early IVF days to allow getting around the reality that life begins at fertilization of the egg by the sperm. What used to be called conception. The new nomenclature redefines pregnancy beginning at implantation which is now called conception. The confusion is purposely generated to allow IVF modalities to proceed. This is just the eugenics application of what has been going on in America since Baby Brown’s being the first “test tube baby”.
Of course, the fallacy is obvious. The union of the egg and sperm to yield the zygote is the true origin of the embryo - not the implantation. In fact, the zygote is a one cell embryo from which all the other cells arise and which result in the baby. We are all zygotes who survived and made it - with all our genetic defects and imperfections. So was the Lord a zygote.
See http://anglicanhistory.org/lact/andrewes/v1/sermon9.html -
“This sure is matter of love; but came there any good to us by it? There did. For our conception being the root as it were, the very groundsill of our nature; that He might go to the root and repair of our nature from the very foundation, thither He went; that what had been there defiled and decayed by the first Adam, might by the Second be cleansed and set right again. That had our conception been stained, by Him therefore, primum ante omnia, to be restored again. He was not idle all the time He was an embyro - all the nine months He was in the womb; but then and there He even ate out the core of corruption that cleft to our nature and us, and made both us and it an unpleasing object in the sight of God.
“And what came of this? We who were abhorred by God, filii irae was our title, were by this means made beloved in Him. He cannot, we may be sure, account evil of that nature, that is now become the nature of His own Son - His now no less than ours. Nay farther, given this privilege to the children of such as are in Him, though but of one parent believing, that they are not as the seed of two infidels, but are in a degree holy, eo ipso; and have a farther right to the laver of regeneration, to sanctify them throughout by the renewing of the Holy Ghost. This honour is to us by the dishonour of Him; this the good by Christ an embyro.”
Wonder He would have made it past the eugenics selection criteria?