Here is a sampling of clips in my inbox in the last 24 hours.
- First, the story of the New Zealand 66 year old woman who traveled to China for a stem cell transplant from aborted fetuses. Her son reports she has now died. Apparently she had a motor neuron disease and had the stem cells transplanted into her brain.
- China again admits to taking the organs of executed prisoners. Demand is high but supply is low, so death row is the place to go . . .China conveniently leads the world in death row prison executions. Wealthy foreigners avoid long waits for an organ thanks to China’s solution to the scarce resource problem.
- NBC ran a show on sex selection in the U.S. Since sex selection is banned in most of the world, people wanting boys over girls or visa versa come to America to balance their families. Couples pay as high as $50,000 for pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) of embryos created in vitro. That’s code for, we implant the one you want and toss the others. ” We take embryos created with in vitro fertilization, and remove one of the cells from the embryos and I can actually take that cell and test it, and see whether or not that embryo is a boy or a girl,” said Dr. Daniel Potter with the Huntington Reproductive Center. Chilling! And of course we must not forget that PGD is harmful and sometimes fatal to the embryo.
- And Kofi Annan of the United Nations said today, ““As biological research expands, and technologies become increasingly accessible, this potential for accidental or intentional harm grows exponentially–even novices working in small laboratories will be able to carry out gene manipulation.”
Author Profile
- Jennifer Lahl, MA, BSN, RN, is founder and president of The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network. Lahl couples her 25 years of experience as a pediatric critical care nurse, a hospital administrator, and a senior-level nursing manager with a deep passion to speak for those who have no voice. Lahl’s writings have appeared in various publications including Cambridge University Press, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Dallas Morning News, and the American Journal of Bioethics. As a field expert, she is routinely interviewed on radio and television including ABC, CBS, PBS, and NPR. She is also called upon to speak alongside lawmakers and members of the scientific community, even being invited to speak to members of the European Parliament in Brussels to address issues of egg trafficking; she has three times addressed the United Nations during the Commission on the Status of Women on egg and womb trafficking.
Latest entries
- FeaturedOctober 16, 2024Brava Italia! Jennifer Lahl, founder The Center for Bioethics and Culture
- FeaturedSeptember 9, 2024Don’t Make Claims Using Outdated Data
- BioethicsMay 16, 2024The Ethics of Transplantation Medicine
- infertilityApril 23, 2024The Rise of International Gestational Surrogacy in the U.S.