By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
While the world celebrates the awarding of a Nobel prize to a British pioneer of in vitro fertilization (IVF), the head of the Pontifical Academy for Life called the award “completely out of line” and reminded the public about the dark side of this process.
The Ansa news agency is reporting that Monsignor Ignacio Carrasco de Paula, head of the Pontifical Academy for Life, criticized the award, which was granted to IVF pioneer Robert Edwards, for ignoring the ethical questions raised by the treatment. While it is true that nearly four million babies have been born using IVF since 1978, tens of millions were destroyed in the process.
“In the best of cases they are transferred into a uterus but most probably they will end up abandoned or dead, which is a problem for which the new Nobel prize winner is responsible,” Monsignor Carrasco said in a statement.
He also pointed out that without his treatment, there would be no market for human eggs, “and there would not be a large number of freezers filled with embryos in the world.”
In his statement, Monsignor Carrasco stressed that he was speaking in a personal capacity.
Edwards, an 85-year-old professor emeritus at the University of Cambridge, developed the technique in the 1950’s along with British gynecological surgeon Patrick Steptoe, who died in 1988. The two created the process by which a human egg is extracted from a woman’s body, fertilized in a petri dish, then implanted in the womb.
On July 25, 1978, Louise Brown of Britain became the first baby born through IVF. Now 30 years old, she gave birth to a son in 2007 who she said was conceived “the natural way.”
Today, about 300,000 babies a year are born via IVF.
The probability that an infertile couple will take home a baby after a cycle of IVF is one in five, about the same odds that healthy couples have of conceiving naturally.
A much more ethical and successful approach to infertility is NaPro Technology, or Natural Procreative Technology (NPT), which was developed at the Pope Paul VI Institute in Nebraska. The process, which involves no egg selection, no donor insemination and no embryo wastage, has a success rate that equals or betters IVF.
However, because of its low cost and subsequent lower profit margin, the process is much less known in the field of infertility treatment, which is currently dominated by expensive drug and laboratory treatments.
© All Rights Reserved, Living His Life Abundantly®/Women of Grace® http://www.womenofgrace.com
