And They Make Fun of Leon Kass For Warning That IVF Might Be Risky to the Child
Ever since the human cloning debates began, some bioethicists have chided the former chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics for having worried decades ago that IVF might pose risks to the children created thereby. Kass was wrong about IVF, they thunder, and he is wrong about cloning, too.
Well, lo and behold: Studies now show Kass was right. Betcha the deriders won't apologize.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 6:57 PM
1 Comments
1 Comments:
Actually, they laugh at Leon Kass for a whole lot of reasons.
As for the studies you cite, they report only genetic defects identified in in vitro IVF embryos by pre-implantation genetic diagnosis - not birth defects in children born through IVF. The article itself points out that many such defects are fatal to the embryo. In other words, these defects are likely a cause of the high rate of embryo failure in IVF; the article offers no evidence that they are a source of birth defects in children. The fact that the researcher was able to more than double the rate of healthy pregnancies by screening these defective embryos out before implantation suggests that they would not have resulted in compromised pregnancies or infants with birth defects even if they had been implanted.
As to the question of birth defects among children actually born through the various assisted reproductive technologies, research seems to show a small increase in birth defects among that population, but the results are not clear. Some relatively small studies have shown birth defect rates among "IVF babies" about 1.5 - 2 times as high as in the general population; a CDC review of over 100,000 US ART births showed an overall birth-defect rate lower than that in the non-ART population. (Summaries here and here.) However, even if the effect is real these studies cannot determine whether the defects are the result of ART procedures themselves, or from factors relevant to the parents (who, by definition, suffer fertility problems of some kind to begin with). Your linked article notes that defects were observed more commonly among embryos from couples actually seeking ART than in a control group from donors who are not fertility-compromised, which is direct evidence that it is the underlying fertility problem, not the ART, that is the cause of at least some of these defects.
In short, there is at best ambiguous evidence that ART is associated with even a minimal increase in birth defects and no evidence that it is the cause of them, while the study you cite in defense of Kass actually provides evidence that the defective embryos identified before implantation are not likely to result in infants with birth defects, and that those defects that do occur are not necessarily the result of ART. It does not even address the point Kass actually raised - the risk to children - making it rather a weak crutch in the first place.
Sadly, Kass still looks like a nutter from here.
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