Creating Still More Anonymity Plus Distance

I understand that anyone contemplating having a baby dreams about rocking a newborn in their arms and cooing into his or her face that smiles back lovingly at them.

I understand that it is impossible to think beyond that to temper tantrums and vomiting all night, teens telling you to f@ck off or walking in on them "doing it" in your bed!

I intellectually understand that the more trouble one had conceiving and carrying a pregnancy, the more obsessed some get with having it work...and having a baby AT ANY COST!

The part if find so SAD is that the caught up in the turmoil of reproductive treatments, the quest becomes everything and the goal is completion for the competitor running this endurance testing triathlon with stamina and endurance.

Like a bride who gets more caught up in the wedding than the marriage . . . to many of these moms-wanna-bes forget that they are creating a sperate human being who will not forever be an infant you rock in your rams but will someday be totally autonomous...a human being who had needs of his own that may be different than your own need to jusr create and have him. 

I saddens me that on a fairly regular basis I read on adoptive parent blogs that they wish they had asked - pressed - for more information about the birth family, but that at the time, they really didn't want to hear it!  They wanted to pretend that God himself meant this child just for them, and nothing else mattered. They could not bear the though off "sharing" him or perhps could ber the guilt of who had suffered for them to have the gift they marveled at.

It is with this sadness of heart that I read in The Times of India, Embryo adoption is latest trend,
about the popularity of totally anonymous fertilized embryos being purchased in India and transplanted - in every sense of that word - into waiting anna-be moms in the U.S. and Europe.

"...this method is called embryo adoption or embryo donation, depending on which side one looks at it from." From my side I'd call it what it is: selling humans. 

Like all adoption and repro technology, it is all about filling the needs, wants and desires of the paying customer with no concern about "rights" of the children affected.

"Adopting an embryo [created of anonymous sperm and anonymous egg] allows a woman, who is infertile, to experience motherhood, complete with labour pains, as against rearing an adopted child," says another infertility expert Dr Indira Hinduja. Even postmenopausal women can get into the act!

One recipient mother realizes an Indian baby "will be difficult to pass off as her own."

"I may let the child know as soon as possible that it was adopted—albeit in a different manner."[emphsis added]

And it gets more complicated...

A new book "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot, which hit the New York Times bestseller list this week, reveals even more insidious and secretive facts about medical science, technology and tampering with our DNA.

Lacks died in 1951 from cervical cancer, survived by her five children and her husband. She is also survived by some of her cervix: Without her knowledge, Lacks' doctor had removed a piece of her tumor for research purposes.

The cancerous cells soon proved to be a hardy bunch, multiplying indefinitely as long as they had access to a few nutrients. Unheard of at the time, the immortal cell line offered scientists an unlimited supply of raw material and a chance to keep experimenting on the same cells as long as they wanted.

For the next half-century, Henrietta Lacks' cells, dubbed HeLa by researchers, left lasting marks on science: They provided a cheap and easy way to test the polio vaccine, for instance, and helped develop the techniques that later made Dolly the cloned sheep a reality. They even went to space so that scientists could explore the effects of zero gravity on human tissue.

Skloot focuses on the wonderhip rights and whether the cell owners should reap profits of medicines and tretament screated from their cells.

Of more concern would be whether we could be cloned after our death without or knowledge?

...since a 1990 California Supreme Court decision, cells are considered biological "waste" once they leave the body. Leukemia patient John Moore sued the physician who treated him and later helped develop a commercial cell line based on his cancer tissue.

Although divided, the court found that Moore had lost the property rights to his cells after doctors removed them from him. By the same token, he had no rights to profit from any commercial application of the orphaned cells.