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Chicago Lab Brings Five Babies to Birth for Spare Parts

Babies conceived and selected for their stem cells are becoming by-product of birth

CHICAGO, May 5, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The trend for creating babies to be used for spare parts is growing. A Chicago area lab, Reproductive Genetics Institute, has successfully brought five genetically selected babies to birth in order to be used as donors of tissue to cure the diseases of their already-born siblings. Nine women were impregnated using embryos conceived in a lab which were pre-selected for desired genetic traits. No details were released about the fate of the other embryos created who failed the selection criteria.

Five of the babies survived to birth. The children were brought to term and their cord blood was harvested for stem cells. The Journal of the American Medical Association reported on the activities of the lab yesterday. Yury Verlinsky, director of the Genetics Institute justified the practice saying that stem cell transplants in some cases represent the last possible resort for treatment of diseases such as leukemia.

An Associated Press article said that the creation of "made-to-order" babies "troubles some ethicists." The pro-life community has warned for years about the dangers of in vitro fertilization and the Catholic Church has warned of the slippery slope of treating human beings as a commodity in its document "Donum Vitae" or "The gift of Life" as early as 1986.

Natalie Hudson, executive director of Toronto Right to Life told LifeSiteNews.com that she is appalled at the frequency with which these stories are appearing. "We are no longer having babies for their own sake. Now we don't even want the baby any more, just the by-products of birth. Now the baby has become the by-product. It used to be that when the baby was born, you threw away the cord. Now you save the cord. What do you do with the baby?"

Dr. Norman Fost of the University of Wisconsin defended this activity in an editorial in the AMA journal "Of all the reasons people have babies, this would seem to be a wonderful reason. Most reasons are either mindless sex or selfish reasons."

While the families in the reported cases kept the new babies, current law in Canada and the United States does not forbid the harvesting of umbilical cords of aborted babies.

Chicago Sun Times coverage:
http://www.suntimes.com/output/health/cst-nws-baby05.html

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