The Slope Really Is Slippery
The Abraham Center of life bills itself as "the world's first embryo bank." Clients of the San Antonio, Texas, center will be able to place their orders for ready-made embryos after perusing a detailed profile of sperm and egg donors.
"We're just trying to help people have babies," Jennalee Ryan, the center's founder, told The Washington Post. Bioethicist John A. Robertson told the Post that embryo banking is not much different from what fertility clinics already do. "People are already choosing sperm and egg donors in separate transactions. Combining them doesn't pose any new major ethical problems."
But embryo banking is not morally neutral. It is another step down the slippery slope toward the clear evil of eugenics. According to global projections, 200,000 people are born annually using in vitro fertilization (ivf). The U.S. is the world's largest user of IVF with 112,000 treatments per year.
For many years, IVF proponents dismissed fears about IVF abuses as irrational slippery-slope arguments. But now the Abraham Center for Life, through embryo selection, is moving society farther down the slope. This abuse of biotechnology opens the floodgates for commercializing human life. When will the embryo drive-through service start?
The slippery slope is real, and it involves a broad cross-section of the bioethics industry. W. Jay Wood, associate professor of philosophy at Wheaton College, notes that the Christian view of sinful human nature makes slippery-slope arguments credible. "Humans naturally test limits. Any cop will tell you that if you post a 35-mph speed limit, drivers will go 38, 40, 42, until the law cracks down."
Slippery-slope reasoning is not foolproof. Wood says, "The illegitimate versions can't tell a plausible ...
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George T.
Technology and all of its new findings are fascinating for their speed ,and wonders, thereby producing in madicine. However there has to be a time of consideration of the consequences. It is easy to assume that all is good because the way of technology is forward. However,"forward"has to include the human being God designed for us. We must not omit HIS knowledge already set clearly in the Bible.These include crucial laws which if broken can only break us.
CHRIS
I don't blame the scientists or their patrons really, i blame the uncaring christian community that looks the other way until its too late to act. If we were alive to our responsibilities we should be mobilizing to stop these evils at infancy, but we are too placid, enjoying ourselves in our little congregations. We are too comfortable to care about wider threats to our faith that does not directly impact on our immediate congregation(s). Satan has only capacity for evil. We should not expect him or his agents to act otherwise. We are the light of the world and we ought to shine. God help us if we refuse to shine and remain unconcerned about these matters!
Jerome
In a world where the rate of infertility is on the rise, it is not surprising to find infertile couples falling prey to questionable practices done in some of our modern fertility clinics. These clinics promise the infertile couple relief from the distress and pain of childlessness yet it is relief at the price of numerous deaths. Let me explain. In order to increase the potential success baby delivery rate to the current standard of 35%, eight or more eggs are usually fertilized. Two to four embryos are then implanted in hope of a successful pregnancy. If all implant successfully, some may be dissolved to give the couple a better “product.” The embryos that are not genetically optimal are not implanted but sacrificed in a way not so different from the practices of old, practices suggesting the reappearance of an ancient fertility God in modern-day apparel. So aren't we really 'Facing Molech anew'? see: http://www.ncbioethics.org/publications/facingmolech.htm