Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

Well, fundies never get sick, see? God heals them.

"But Republican donors personally use IVF clinics to have children, while only scientists now and sick people later will benefit from stem cell research."

Implicitly reminding us how difficult it is to be both a Republican and a scientist?

Science benefits, Brad, not scientists.

Wow - the Republicans aren't consistent in their beliefs, statements, positions? Thanks for the update. But that's not a flip-flop, since that would require a principled position on something to begin with, instead just endless spin...

It is, as I understand it, now possible to fertilize only one egg at a time. If so, then the only reason to fertilize more than one is to avoid the inconvenience and expense of repeated failed attempts to become pregnant. I don't want to minimize either, but they don't begin to compare to dying from ALS. Deliberately creating embryos you know will be destroyed for the sake of convenience is much more disrespectful of human life than doing so to save someone from death.

I have personal experience with IVF. Everyone
responds differently to the drugs, but I don't
think anyone would produce 100 eggs in a cycle -
20 would be a very high number, 5-10 would be
much more common. Of these perhaps 60-70%
would fertilize, and they will attempt to implant
at most 6 embryos (if there are enough of
sufficiently good quality). The more you know
about this process the more you realize that there
is natural selection at every step - in IVF
everything is carefully monitored, so you know how
many eggs were fertilized, how many were put back,
and then of course whether or not any got far
enough to cause a "pregnancy" - measured by the
HDC hormone level. If you understand this
process you will also understand that "natural"
sex and reproduction will probably involve the
creation of roughly the same number of eggs
and embryos which never make it - it's just
that they're spread out over many months and
the ones that don't make it never cause any detectable symptoms. Does that make any moral
difference ? Depends on your faith, I guess.

Whatever you think about the moral issue, it's
clear that Bush's "compromise" on stem-cell
research was based on a distortion of the
facts and is consequently a poor policy.

One point I'd like to make--it's much easier politically to ban something that never was legal rather than ban something that's been popular for 20 years. Otherwise you'd equally well criticize Bush for not actually banning abortion, and I'm sure that this isn't what many of you meant.

The point being, Bush is picking a battle that he can win rather than entering the unwinnable IVF one. Agree or disagree, this is more intelligent than losing both.

In the interests of reducing disinformation about IVF, I'd like to amplify what was said above: A single IVF procedure would almost never create more than 20 embryos -- and that would be an unusually high number. It's more like 6-10, if you're lucky and respond well to the drugs. The "leftover" embryos are usually frozen, though they may be discarded if the embryologist doesn't think they are robust enough to survive to be used in another cycle. Even relatively young women have a surprisingly high percentage of chromosomally abnormal eggs, fertilization itself cannot be assured, and even fertilized eggs (embryos) can stop growing. There is almost always a reduction in the number of eggs or embryos to work with at every step of the process, sometimes dramatically so -- that's why they try to obtain a relatively high number of eggs, and fertilize all of these, rather than aiming solely for one or the number that they would implant.

And as to the idea that the numbers game is a matter of convenience -- well, most insurers don't cover IVF, and most people are financially able to undergo the procedure only a few times, if even that -- so unless it is merely "inconvenient" to forego parenthood altogether, I would say that more than convenience is at stake in trying to obtain a reasonable number of embryos to work with (too many eggs can compromise quality and lead to negative health consequences for the mother).

I hate Bush's policy on stem cell research, but IVF seems to have become the strawman of the liberal response. The truth is that, judicious use of stem cells for research, like IVF, has the potential to alleviate a lot of misery. Opponents never want Pandora's box opened because they know that if any benefit can be shown, they will quickly lose the fight. They will lose anyway, because researchers in other countries will prove the benefit of stem cell research if there is any. It's unlikely that Americans are willing to forego that benefit on the strength of a principle they have already pretty much rejected by not being outraged at IVF.

Of course, if Bush really believed that this was
a moral issue, then he would have tried to "ban"
the creation of embryos for stem-cell research.
Whereas his current policy, as I understand it,
is just to prevent federal funding for research
on "new" stem-cell lines. Clearly just political
pandering - he wants to make it look as though he
has a moral position, but he isn't prepared to
take the political risk of proposing a law and
having a vote on it. I would prefer that we
liberals criticize this for being a typical piece
of flip-slopping chickenshit, rather than getting
into the comparison with IVF.

Tich, and anybody else who is interested, I suggest you read the report of the President's bioethics team. They seriously considered the prospect of making all stem cell research illegal, along with the use of donor gametes in assisted reproductive technology procedures -- the use of donated sperm or ova. Their rationale for proposing this is, so far as I could gather, to show everyone how much we value life (i.e., by not permitting its "sale" or commercial development at any point). The panel rejected this idea as being politically infeasible. So the not "letting the cat out of the bag" meme proposed above is clearly where they are coming from.

As an Australian, I have no problems with Bush's stand on stem cell research. It just means that here, where there are far less restrictions (following a very reasoned and rational public debate), we are now powering ahead of the Yanks in this field - attracting hundreds of millions in new foreign investment (much of it from the States) in our biotech sector.

More short-sighted US bans on life sciences R&D I say.

Barbara wrote, "...so unless it is merely 'inconvenient' to forego parenthood altogether..."

Uh...ever hear of *adoption*?

Sure liberal, it never takes long for adoption to come up in the same sentence as IVF. Have you ever adopted? Or looked into it? It's at least as expensive as and usually much more time consuming than IVF. And it's often personally intrusive. The truth is, IVF isn't a big deal, technically, but it is financially. The trajectory for most people is to try IVF 1-2 times (if it's an option) with a few frozen transfers in for good measure, and then move on to adoption. Many people do IVF successfully and then adopt. $$ to donuts (as my mom always says) people who do or try IVF are more open to adoption than people who never give reproduction a second thought because it works so well the way "God" intended. Liberal, please feel free to adopt rather than have your "own" biological children, but until I see "normal" people truly consider that as an option, leave us IVFers alone for trying to realize the same impulse as the rest of humanity.

Hey, Nabakov, what do I need to do to move to Australia?

Apparently, 'embryo adoption' is all the rage now among certain religious groups. The same groups who, sadly more often than not, lose interest once the unborn lose the 'un' and become sponges on the welfare state.