January 11, 2008
Science Department
Cell Worship
Bill Beckman at Illinois Review is concerned about human embryos destroyed during in-vitro fertilization:
A January 2nd LifeSiteNews article covers findings following a UK Parliamentary question on IVF. Data from a government organization showed that over one million human embryonic children were killed in the UK in the past 14 years as 'waste' embryos from IVF processes.
The acquired data showed that 2,137,924 embryonic humans were created using IVF between 1991 and 2005, but about 1.2m were never used. Scientists killed the embryos who were not deemed strong enough for implantation, and froze those not considered 'waste' embryos. Those that survived the freezing process will die in ten years if not implanted.
'Surplus' embryos were created because women responded differently to fertility drugs, doctors told the Times Online. As many as 40 IVF-fertilized eggs can be used in some treatments. The embryos are then assessed for viability, with only about 20% usually considered strong enough to implant successfully in a woman.
Wait a minute! These numbers do not compute. If only 20% are deemed viable, then 80% are killed before ever reaching the point where the phrase "excess embryo" might get used. Does this mean in reality that the death toll was over 8 million non-viable embryos, killed to create over 2 million viable ones, of which 1.2 million were not used because deemed excess?
I'm having a little trouble researching the details, but I think human embryos produced by IVF are assessed for viability when they've divided into a total of 8 undifferentiated cells, and they are implanted by the time they reach 100 cells. You probably scrape off several times that many cells each time you scratch your nose.
This seems to have crossed the line from pro-life into some weird form of cell worship.
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