MELBOURNE, Australia, NOV. 4, 2000 (ZENIT.org).- In vitro fertilization,
long condemned by the Catholic Church, is raising new legal and medical
fears in the secular world.

Recent news reports, for instance, have highlighted the medical dangers
involved for the children born as a result.

On Oct. 14 The Age newspaper of Australia reported that in vitro
fertilization could pass the problem of infertility from fathers to sons
and bypass an important natural screening process. According to Roger
Short, a reproductive biologist at the Royal Women's Hospital, male
infertility often occurred because men had mutations or deletions in the
genes that controlled sperm production.

Addressing the third Menzies Scholar Symposium at the Murdoch Children's
Research Institute, Short explained that in some techniques, a single
abnormal sperm is injected into a single egg.

"In allowing defective sperm to fertilize an egg in this way, we know that
we are propagating the defect in any male offspring that are produced," the
biologist said.

Although the offspring's infertility could be treated, Short questioned
whether doing so outweighed the adverse effects in the population at large.

"We can take one sperm and micro-inject it into a human egg and create a
pregnancy, but how do we know we're doing the right thing?" he asked
delegates to the symposium. "We are bypassing an important safety check of
nature's designing. Evolutionary biologists would have to say that the
evidence suggests infertility is not an accident; it's a protective
mechanism and we're bypassing it at our peril."

Danger for embryos

BBC on Sept. 12 reported another issue concerning the safety of IVF
treatments. It turns out that a commonly used technique to help women
conceive may increase the risks of babies being born with defects, BBC said.

The procedure involved is that of assisted "hatching" in which a laser or
microscopic needle is used to make a hole or thin the membrane around
embryos produced in the test tube. This can help the developing embryo
successfully implant into the lining of the womb, and produce a pregnancy.

BBC noted, however, that a scientific study carried out by the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, found that assisted
hatching was associated with higher rates of "monozygotic twinning."

This is where a single, fertilized embryo splits in two at an early stage,
producing a twin pregnancy. Monozygotic twinning is more likely to produce
babies with defects than the more usual form of twinning, in which two
fertilized embryos implant themselves into the womb.

Dr. Laura Schieve from the disease-control center warned that her study,
while not definitive, should prompt further research into the issue. She
said that in her study, women who had monozygotic twinning were far more
likely to have had assisted hatching.

The risk was 1.7 times greater in cases where some of the embryos
transferred had been hatched, and nearly four times higher in cases where
all of the embryos had undergone the procedure. Other factors such as the
age of the woman, the number of embryos transferred and previous attempts
could not explain such a difference.

Another source of concern over IVF techniques is the danger of human error.

Two infertility clinics in the United Kingdom recently had to offer DNA
tests to dozens of mothers, to prove that the babies they gave birth to are
really their own. The problem was discovered by chance, according to a
Sept. 23 report in The Telegraph, when a woman about to have her own
fertilized eggs implanted in her womb at a Hampshire hospital overheard a
surgical assistant say they had been lost. Despite an extensive search, the
fertilized eggs were not found.

The patient was sent home and, reportedly, has since been told that her IVF
treatment, which can be a protracted and stressful experience, will have to
be restarted. Afterward, an investigation by the Human Fertilization and
Embryology Authority, the industry watchdog, found discrepancies in the way
patients' eggs were labeled and stored. At least 20 couples were affected.

The Guardian newspaper reported Sept. 25 that hundreds of women have
contacted an emergency hot line fearing that their children are not theirs
or that their stored embryos have been given to other women.

Tim Hedgley of Issue, the national fertility association brought in to
counsel patients, said the women were probably implanted with the wrong
embryos. He said the legal ramifications of the mix-up were "extremely
serious."

Excessive numbers of embryos

A long-standing deficiency in IVF clinics has been the large numbers of
"excess" embryos produced. An ethical dilemma has arisen about the fate of
these incipient human lives. Some favor their destruction, while others
plead for them to be implanted in mothers for adoption.

More than 100,000 such human embryos have accumulated at U.S. fertility
clinics, according to estimates reported in the Oct. 16 Los Angeles Times,
though no one knows the numbers for sure.

One of those involved in promoting the adoption of these frozen embryos is
JoAnn Davidson. "We see these embryos as children locked in frozen
orphanages," she said. "Those embryos are human life."

Davidson runs a placement service for embryos. In the last two and a half
years, Nightlight Christian Adoptions of Fullerton, California, has placed
202 embryos from 20 donor families, producing five children. Four others
are yet to be delivered.

But there are far more people seeking embryos than there are donors. Many
specialists say that fertility clinics would do more to foster donations if
they were not constrained by legal uncertainties.

In most IVF procedures, a woman takes hormone injections so that her body
ripens 15 or 20 egg cells during her monthly reproductive cycle rather than
the usual single egg. Doctors remove the eggs in a surgical procedure and
mix them with sperm. The resulting embryos grow for several days in a
laboratory dish, then are transferred to the woman's uterus.

Not every embryo grows successfully in the womb. In fact, most fail. Still,
couples usually transfer no more than four at once, to cut the odds of
having twins and triplets. This leaves many patients with unused embryos,
which they most often choose to freeze for possible use later.

Thousands are discarded once their owners decide that they are no longer
needed. But embryos have been thawed and used in successful pregnancies as
long as nine years after they were frozen.

While some adoption agencies are transferring embryos to hopeful patients
who cannot create their own, the work is hampered by a lack of clear laws
about who the legal parents of the resulting children will be. Another
complication arises when the couple responsible for the creation of the
embryos divorces.

Already embryos are turning up in divorce and custody disputes, forcing
judges to decide whether laws written for property and contracts should
apply to this early form of human life. The Los Angeles Times explained
that in two states, New York and California, courts ruling in high-tech
reproduction cases have appealed to lawmakers to clarify parenthood and
custody laws.

The newspaper went on to quote Arthur Caplan, a bioethics professor at the
University of Pennsylvania. "We've just hung these embryos out there in
limbo, which makes no sense," said Caplan. "The solution we've settled on
is, 'Let's just make as many as we want now and worry about their moral
status later.' That is just not morally responsible."
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