Monday February 16, 2004
Australian Clinic Uses IVF to Search out and Destroy Embryos With Cancer Gene
MELBOURNE, February 16, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The eugenic practice of genetic testing to screen out the "unfit" has moved a step forward in Australia. Nathan Charles Runciman, a child born January 20, was conceived in a lab by in vitro fertilization. Using a process called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis he had two of his cells removed to test for the gene for bowel cancer. When the cells were found to be free of the cancer gene, he was implanted in his mother's uterus and allowed to live.
The Age reports that on her first cycle at Monash IVF clinic, the reproductive medicine clinic of Monash University, Victoria, Australia, Mrs. Runciman produced eight embryos and five had the gene for cancer, including those regarded as the "strongest", which would normally have been implanted. Of the three remaining embryos, one was "unsuitable for transfer". This is the only epitaph that will be written for these tiny human beings who were then discarded as useless.
Monash IVF chief executive Donna Howlett said in the Age that "Monash IVF screening had produced 15 babies tested for single gene disorders."
Victoria's Monash University's most famous son is notorious bioethicist, Peter Singer, a proponent of infanticide for disabled children and involuntary euthanasia for the elderly. His work to sell eugenics to the world scientific community has been immensely successful. Peter Singer was rewarded for his pioneering in bioethics with the prestigious Chair of Bioethics at Princeton University.
Mrs. Runciman told The Age that, "if I was going to have a child, it was going to have a test." She said she was "so happy he won't get the disease".
See coverage in The Age:
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/02/16/1076779910078.html
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