Issues of Bioethical Concepts - Essay Example

Ethics Bioethical issues are relevant and important nowadays due to the rapid development of biological technologies. In order to resolve the casegiven, it would be vital to observe contemporary trends of bioethical issues, such as in vitro fertilization, human cloning and disposal of stem cells. In most discussions of the reproductive bioethics and fertility treatment the scientists (Koch, 1993) claim the interests of the potential child are principally important. The practical meaning of this suggestion has been abhorrently overstated; contrary to the common sense, the interests of the expected child rarely represent an adequate reason for refusing to proceed with in vitro fertilization. "Modern fertility treatments became the focus of much media attention in 1993 after the widely publicised case in which a 59 year old woman was enabled to give birth to twins by means of in vitro fertilisation with donated eggs and her partner's sperm. Fertility treatments raise a wide range of ethical and social issues" (Koch, 1993, p.143). Such factors as the potential child's welfare and interests are critical reasons for refusing to provide a couple with fertility treatment. In spite of the fact that the issue of conception is foremost in the present discussion, I would like to exemplify the situation with the process of child adoption. Even though it differs from conception, because the child already exists, authorities have established a number of criteria for adoption: parents' welfare, their personal qualities, health status and other information should be taken into account. These criteria are partially determined by supply and demand: for instance, potential parents are forced to compete with each other, because the number of infertile families is larger that the number of orphans who are to be adopted. Similarly, in vitro fertilization, associated with conception, poses following question: (bluntly speaking) will the child benefit from being born to these parents or would it be better if he/she never existed The likelihood of the particular potential child being born to another couple simply does not exist, and conception therefore is dissimilar to adoption in this sense. Naturally, it is hard to determine when it would be more preferable if the potential child didn't exist; the fundamental worth of an individual's life cannot be either measured or quantified, least of all if this life hasn't been started yet. It is possible to say, however, that the level of parents' responsibility would be rather low for it to be more favorable not to be born. Society's unwillingness to take care of a child excepting the most traumatic circumstances of horrible parenting proves this (Koch, 1993). Using the example of the 59-year old woman who gave birth to twins, a most important obstruction is that the mother will probably die when they are still at the stage of childhood, i.e. not having brought them up. "No doubt, other things being equal, it is preferable to have a mother who survives well into one's own adulthood. But to put this forward as a sufficient reason for denying fertility treatment is tantamount to claiming that it is better never to have existed than for one's mother to have died when one is still quite young" (Brindsen, 1992,p.280). In addition, in the case of in vitro fertilization, the interests of society are masqueraded as the potential child's interests. The procedure of selecting couples for the fertilization itself looks like the other official procedures that involve difficulties in distributing resources. There are two major hazards in failing to differentiate between the interests of the certain potential child and those of the potential children who might be born if resources were used to help other prospective parents instead. The first risk is that medical specialists may wrongly withhold the fertilization of the certain couple even if refusal to help them is not likely to bring benefit to other couples. The second hazard is that society may fail to support the process of reproduction with sufficient funds. "It would clearly be wrong in general to fund assisted conception for an individual couple if it would be better for that couple's potential child not to exist. But it is a very different matter for society to provide insufficient funds for treatments that would confer a genuine benefit" (ibid, p.299). In addition it would be important to touch one more aspect of the issue - the religious perspective and attitude towards in vitro fertilization. The approach of the Catholic Church might be formulated as following: child is a gift, not an entitlement. Furthermore, the church criticizes in vitro fertilization for the destruction of some embryos, because a couple, planning their parenthood, wish to have no more than two children, so that the rest of embryos are likely to be destroyed. This act is viewed as a murder, because the church teaches that human life starts from the very conception, with an embryo. As for the cloning of humans, the diversity of attitudes towards this issue is tremendous, and the debate usually touches religious and ethical themes. Religious standpoint is based mainly upon the traditions and principles of each faith, the majority of which in general rejects cloning of human-beings. Ethical side of the debate concentrates on social guidelines for behaviour that vary from culture to culture, but also concur that human cloning is to be restricted in a legal way (Robertson, 1994). In 1998 American scientists successfully created a clone of a lamb - Dolly, a healthy and viable but completely sterile sheep after having undertaken 277 attempts. Since cloning of humans in much more complicated, even more deaths and defects can take place when carrying out the experiments. Nowadays, the dangers connected to the cloning of humans are so considerable that "virtually all people agree that the current risks of physicals harm to children associated with somatic cell nuclear transplantation cloning might justify a prohibition at this time on such experimentation" (Brannigan, 2001, p.150) The official viewpoint of the Roman Catholic Church is that "every possible act of cloning humans is intrinsically evil" (Robertson, 1994, p.7) and therefore is not acceptable. Roman Catholics follow Biblical study that asserts that everyone has dignity since he/she has been created in accordance with the image of God, by a unique act of Lord. Furthermore, cloning abuses children regarding them as objects of manipulation and is likely to endanger the personal identity of the clone as well as the individual whose genome has been duplicated. In addition, clones do not function in exactly the same way as human-beings do, so cloning is likely to produce 'inferior humans'. Ethical considerations take into account more practical issues such as possibility of physical harm to the embryo, possible degradation of the institute of family, negative psychological influence the child is likely to experience, social harms and possible objectification of children. Physical harm is understandable, because scientists are still not able to create fertile clones that are able to live as long as humans do. Thus, the word 'inferiority complex' is suitable in both physical and psychological contexts. A cloned child is likely to be encumbered by his/her own background and his/her connection with the genome donor, but the supporters of cloning of humans hold that such negative influences might be excluded by providing the child with appropriate psychological aid. The issue of parenting is likely to become distorted because there will be almost no need in parenting itself, even though the supporters claim that cloned children will be loved regardless of their background and the way of their creation. Moreover, many scholars fear (Robinson, 1994) "fear that parents and larger society might begin to view children as objects and not recognize that they have worth in and of themselves. [] Supporters argue that legislation can be written to prevent this from happening. It is not a legitimate concern" (Robinson, 1994, p.12). As for potential social harms, opponents hold that common practice of cloning will stimulate a form of eugenics once people subjectively determine the most favourable traits and qualities. On the contrary, supporters claim that the possible benefits to society of cloning outstanding people, such as writers, intellectuals and scientists; and these benefits thus are likely to compensate for political problems. Over the past ten years, public attention has also turned to embryonic stem cells: the cells of the embryo at its earliest developmental stages are the basis for all the organs in the body, and thus seem an interesting prospect for both research and medical practice. Animal stem sells had been used by scientists for several years (Kuehnle, Goodell, 2002)then, approximately seven years ago, the U.s. scholars created the first long-term embryonic stem sell lines. Regrettably, deriving such cells is associated with destruction of embryos, and although the scholars and the supporting organization had created a bioethics assembly that controlled and observed the work, many scholars had serious stipulations (Wertz, 2002). Nevertheless, this area is gradually developing in many countries. But why is this issue is important in ethical sense Historically, whenever any social group has been categorized as inferior, serious abuse and discrimination has close-followed the process - "our current use of language like "spare" and "supernumerary" to describe embryos may conveniently hide the reality of a real personal existence and encourage us to think of these beings as mere commodities" (Holland et al, 2001, p.54). Through the history, people were humiliated by labels of gender, race, skin colour, worship and social class - and the present generation can be characterized by the discrimination of this stage of development. "Respect for each individual person is so basic to civilised society that we must, I suggest, apply the precautionary principle by defining the beginning of individual life as this point of unique biological certainty; anything else is a guess" (Holland et al, 2001, p.12. Furthermore, the use of stem cells is associated with killing a living embryo so the Catholic Church views this action as an ordinary murder, or the destruction of individual life at the stage of 'sunrise'. Those people, who are followers of the Biblical study, believe that human life is eternal and that there is an afterlife or a life after death that logically goes after the termination of human life. "But if we do not have such faith, then the destruction of individual human lives at this early stage is the complete termination of their existence and of any potential which they may have had - surely the most terrible and most arrogant thing which could be inflicted on any group of our fellow humans" (Wertz, 2002, p.145). As one might assume, all these issues can be united into the same moral dilemma: in order to save the child's life, parents were forced to murder eight 'in vitro' embryos', that is unethical in nature, since being aware of the real goal pursued by the parents applying for in vitro fertilization, which is to use the potential child as a set of tools or as mechanical staff, should have withheld fertilization. The parenthood instincts are really strong, and the couple tries to use any available source of aid to cure their child, and if to go beyond the long and boring ethical considerations, they act as typical parents who desperately need solution for their problem. But an unwritten code of bioethics suggests that these eight embryos, destroyed by the couple, shouldn't have had their conception to such parents. On the other hand, I view the use of stem cells of an unmatched or unhealthy embryo as partially justified activity: in spite of the dominance of life, it is important to take into account the quality of life of each particular person and the possible prognoses for the development of an embryo. If it is unhealthy, the child is likely to come to existence with birth defects that is likely to have a negative impact on the quality of the individual's life and on his/her parents, who will be obliged to take care of their handicapped child throughout his/her whole life course. On the other hand, the use of stem cells, in some sense, point to the certain corruption in this area: some mercantile women might terminate their pregnancy in order to cell the embryo's stem cells. As one might assume, the case suggests that Jim and Gwen have the most righteous intentions, but if Gwen needs an embryo in order to terminate her pregnancy and to derive the vital stem cells, her actions are extremely immoral, since she views the embryo as raw material not as a potential personality. This is also related to in vitro fertilization: Gwen ignores the fact that this potential child is her flash and blood as well as her daughter Ruth, and she is ready to murder her unborn child in order to save her living daughter. In addition, with respect to current medical achievements and non-achievements, it is possible to suggest that cloning of human-being would be unhelpful, because I assert that the parents will not be satisfied with the 'copy' of their daughter. Furthermore, the case study doesn't outline the real goals of cloning: whether they simply need a 'reproduction' of their dying daughter, or a clone whose organs will be used to save Ruth. Both versions have certain percentage of probability, and it is important to note that both of them are dissatisfactory: Gwen and Jim are likely to receive a disabled copy of their child, who will probably be healthy, but be born with defects; the latter version points to its immorality, since neither embryos not clones can be used as the material, because such use would support the abovementioned idea of inferiority. Thus, if I were a doctor, I would refuse to continue these experiments with in vitro fertilization and would never allow cloning of human-beings, since, with respect to all abovementioned, cloning might become a widespread practice that produces either 'spares' or 'subhumans'. Works cited 1) Brannigan, M. Ethical Issues in Human Cloning - Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives. Seven Bridges Press, 2001 2) Brindsen, P. Oocyte recovery and embryo transfer techniques for in vitro fertilization, In Brindsen, P; Ransbuty, P. A textbook of in vitro fertilization and assisted reproductive technologies. London: Prentice Hill, 1992 3) Holland ,S. Lebacqz, K. and Zoloth, L. (eds) The Human Embryonic Stem Cell Debate: Science, Ethics and Public Policy. MIT Press, 2001 4) Koch, L. Physiological and psychological risks of the new reproductive technologies, touch choices. NY: Routledge, 1993. 5) Kuehnle, I. and Goodell, M. The therapeutic potential of stem cells from adults. British Medical Journal, 2002, #325, pp.372-376. 6) Robertson, J. The Question of Human Cloning. Hastings Center Report, 1994, #24: pp. 6-14 7) Wertz, D. Embryo and stem cell research in the U.S.A: an ethical approach. Trends in Molecular Medicine, 2002, #8, pp.143-146. Read More