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PR: Don't Create Designer Babies
22.07.2004
Youth Defence today criticised the actions of Britain’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority which established the right to allow ‘designer babies’ to be created for the purposes of medical treatment.
Youth Defence have a number of concerns regarding this latest development. Firstly, we believe that it is wrong to create and grow a human being for the sole purpose of using that person to treat another. Yes, that person may be guaranteed his or her right to life but many other embryonic human beings will be destroyed in the process. These unwanted embryos will be flushed down a sink simply because they don’t have ‘perfect’ genes. Every child conceived has an absolute right to life. Eoghan de Faoite, Chairperson of YD said today “We would hate to see society move in such a direction where human life becomes completely disposable and is only valued if it contains a set of ‘perfect genes’”
Secondly, this situation could in the future, be the cause of unborn children being routinely aborted because they end up not being a donor match. It has happened that scientists have implanted human embryos, believing that they will be successful donor matches, only to be killed later through abortion because they discover that they are not a compatible donor.
Youth Defence believes that every ethical effort should be made to help those with illness and disease and would strongly recommend the use of ethically legitimate, non-controversial research which does not result in the loss of any early human lives. Growing and destroying human beings for the purposes of treatment undermines any benefit which may come from this procedure. Would we find acceptable the removal of organs from a terminally ill patient to treat another person? Eoghan de Faoite added “Doctors and scientists should concentrate their efforts on using adult stem cells as a means of treating disease instead of resorting to the bad medicine of embryo destruction. We have already seen many successful developments in this area and it should be developed.”
He concluded, “Medical science has proven that life does in fact begin at the moment of conception. Any interruption after this point that results in the loss of life has to be wrong.”
End
