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IFV Embryo Designer Babies | Free Medical Law Essay

'It may be contended that in relation to IVF and the wider concept of designer babies, much of English law is unwarranted and unnecessary. In particular, this contention is based on the belief that there is no need for the law to intervene in a well-established 'doctor - parents -to-be' relationship to prevent the latter benefiting from the use of whatever methods of assisted conception are possible to enable them to have children. Moreover, this is well-illustrated by the plight of parents seeking to use such methods so as to give birth to a child that will help save the life of an existing, ill sibling.

Critically evaluate these assertions...

According to the sixth Annual Report of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, during the fifteen months from January 1995 to April 1996, 1955 babies were born as a result of donor insemination, and 7307 babies as a result of IVF and embryo transfer. This suggests that around 7500 babies are born each year in Britain as a result of medically assisted conception, compared to 600000 babies conceived through heterosexual intercourse. In effect, therefore, the majority of mothers do so without having their moral worth scrutinised, unlike women seeking medically assisted reproduction techniques.

Numerous contemporary reproductive methods concern the fertilisation of the ovum in a laboratory and the following transfer of the embryo from the Petri dish to the uterus. Hence, strictly speaking, in vitro fertilisation (hereinafter IVF) and embryo transfer (hereinafter ET) are scientific terms. Nonetheless, general convention likens IVF with the standard typical treatment for childlessness due to blockage of the fallopian tubes and ET with the implantation of an embryo which has no genetic relationship either to the recipient or her husband. If harm is to be done to the embryo, one would expect it being most probable while being influenced in transportation- and this is a subject of common technique rather than of a precise therapy.

Customary IVF treatment concerns collection of ova from the wife's abdomen, fertilisation of these with her husband's sperm in the laboratory and transfer of the resulting embryo to her uterus; the treatment is, consequently, fundamentally one intended to bypass diseased fallopian tubes. The collection of ova is now comparatively straightforward through a laparoscope; the treatment cycle does, though, require complicated hormonal preparation to guarantee super-ovulation. This is imperative to the process as the success rate is significantly enhanced when supplementary embryos are implanted; furthermore, a surplus is necessary so as to make sure that the embryos supplemented are normal. The mean live birth rate depends to an extent on the size and proficiency of the treatment centre but is at present in the order of 21% of treatment cycles; clinical pregnancy rates vary from 9.5% when one embryo is transferred to 26% when three are implanted. Consequently, although IVF may well be the possible treatment for one of the commonest female grounds of childlessness, the potential for triumph is comparatively low. The pregnancy and live birth rates following IVF show no important variations when linked to the principal motive for treatment.

The motivation of the procedure represents no problems in the province of family law. The genetic and natural descent of the resulting infant is not in doubt. All that has happened is that a process has been replaced for a natural one. As stated by Mason, in Law and Medical Ethics, protests that this is immoral, would mean a contention with the surgical treatment of any disease being equally immoral. It should be noted however, that it is evident that IVF, by definition, concerns the creation of an embryo outside the human body and is, consequently, unlawful if performed by a person who is not licensed to do so.

An additional situation is that the ovum is provided by another woman. The requirement might occur as being the only means by which a woman with, for example, abdominal adhesions could have children and it may be sought-after in the incident of a prospective mother suffering from a related genetic disease. About 16% of childlessness for female explanations is owing to ovarian breakdown and the ovaries may be damaged, for example, in the course of treatment for cancer. The situation is that the donated egg is fertilised by the husband's semen and the embryo then transferred to the wife's womb. Once this has taken place, the natural- though not genetic- parentage is convincingly unmistakable. The subject is now placed outside legal doubt with s 27(1) of Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (hereinafter The Act) 1990, in maintaining that a woman who bears a child as a consequence of the placing in her of an embryo or of sperm and eggs, and no other woman, is to be regarded as the mother of the child. There is, of course, no technical grounds why the sperm ought to be those of the husband and, in the incident of collective male infertility and an impenetrable female genital tract, donor semen may well be applied in the same way. What of an infertile wife with an infertile husband? Even though such an arrangement may be considered as too infrequent for contemplation, it could, hypothetically take place. The circumstances can be administered by embryo donation whereby an embryo executed from donated ovum and donated sperm is implanted in the infertile woman. The ensuing difficulties then remain somewhere between those if IVF and those surrounding surrogate motherhood. Again, the 1990 Act, by virtue of ss 27 and 28, states that the child born of embryo donation is, for all intentions, the child of the carrying mother and her consenting husband.

A great portion of the debate around infertility treatment considers access: what services should be available and who should have access to them. Frequently this leads to negotiations about the ethical acceptability for the different types of assisted conception. Though, there is also dispute about the patients themselves, as well as the treatments they search for. It is frequently supposed in the somewhat sensitive discussions in newspapers that there is the difficult patient on one side and a rational, thoughtful commentator on the other.

Fertility treatment

In the context of reproduction, there is no right under English law, nor is there a right to access fertility treatment. The law restricts access to fertility treatment, under the statute known as the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990. it is concerned with a number of diverse issues, one being the access to infertility treatment. The 'welfare of the child' clause, states that 'a woman should not be provided with infertility services unless account has been taken of the welfare of any child who may be born as a result of the treatment, or of any other child who might be affected as a result of the birth.'

This clause is a way of assessing the patients, to determine whether they are suitable for treatment. The assessment is based on all aspects of the patient's life which are thought to be relevant for the request for treatment, as a preference to clinical grounds. This includes an assessment of the patient's history, criminal record, the family circumstances and the strength of their relationship and various other things to determine whether they are in fact 'good parents.' The welfare of the child came about when a Lady Saltoun, became concerned about IVF being available to single women and lesbians and unmarried couples. She therefore tabled an amendment to the Bill which was said that no embryo should be replaced in the uterus of a single woman.

Although the amendment fell by one vote at the Committee stages of the Bill, the spirit of the amendment was made clear by the Lord Chancellor. It can be quoted here:

It would be clearly unfortunate if this Bill were seen in any way to be conflicting with the importance we attach to family values.

But what is meant by taking adequate account of the welfare of the child? There are no guidelines from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority to say which people should be treated and which should not. The importance is thus on the medical profession to make a choice and there is very little published data on how the welfare of the child should be assessed in practice. The decision thus involves contemplating a future scenario that may never arrive, which can cause issues for debate. However, in a speech recounted in one report, the King's College Hospital provided some information. In one year it saw 1,500 patients and were concerned with about 77 of them. Of these, 46 were treated, 6 refused and another 25 had the decision postponed to be made at a later date.

To give clearer insight into this area, the article to which I am referring, draws attention to a case from 1988. the application was refused by the judge. It concerned a woman, with a history of prostitution and a criminal record. She went to St Mary's hospital and was put on the waiting list for IVF treatment. However, her history was discovered at the hospital and consequentially they took her off the waiting list. She was not allowed a review of the decision as she had been given a chance to answer the case against her by the hospital ethics committee, and there was not a blanket policy for refusing treatment to people in these situations. Indeed, this area has been the cause of much controversy and given the indeterminacy of the clause in legislation, there is no obvious and evident way of deciding who gets the treatment.

A related topic for discussion is that of the 'designer baby' debate. It is often argued that this novel curiosity is an expected consequence of recent systems and innovations; that because of IVF and the reality that there have been more advances ever since, this dispute was certain to occur. Science, it is often stated, is progressing ahead of ethics and regulation. However while there have been several major developments in reproductive expertise, some of the techniques that are presently producing such disagreement are not unexpected or particularly innovative.

Nevertheless, today's society is experiencing apprehension about our capacity to cope with this innovation. There is a perception that is if we innovate, it will produce unanticipated exertion and hazards that we will not be able to deal with. Vitally, still, the ambivalence about modernization, predominantly in relation to novel reproductive technologies, is not determined by general public apprehension, but by reservations about the scientific and political influential. Infertile couples have established themselves eager to take advantages of the potentials offered by techniques like IVF, and, as the Hashmi case illustrates, resolute to make function of the more original techniques to save the life of a sick child. The open response to precise cases, like the Hashmi one, has principally been compassionate. The influential have, however, articulated vigilance and apprehension at every turn, and encouraged a specific type of dispute that provides immense importance to ideas of vulnerability, and the possible inconveniences triggered by inadvertent consequences of modern expansions. The intention of the 'designer babies' discussion has not been to face up to uncertainties that some people have, by assembling a strong case for modernization, but to connect these fears and endeavour to lessen them by creating precautions and restraints.

The original opposition to IVF was traditionally conservative, with the Catholic Church prominent. Today's opposition to innovative reproductive technologies is often described by those who believe themselves to be radical environmentalists or certain strands of feminist opinion, for example. A long way from being marginalised, these examinations have an extensive reverberation with a society that is gradually more undecided about modernization and change. Conceivably this helps to make clear why fears about 'designer babies' are entertained.

From the position of conception on, parents are perceived as a menacing feature in their children's lives. The health authorities' evident fixation with the actions of pregnant women and new mothers, for example, with the psychological progression of children and the habits in which parents and children interrelate. There is a mounting wisdom that there is an incompatibility between parents and their children; and that left to their own plans, parents will implement their own needs to the disadvantage of the child. In this illustration, the child emerges as the symbol of today's society of vulnerability. In exercising their authority over a vulnerable child, parents can instigate destruction, whether or not they intend to do so. The debate is hence involved with the manifestation of society's anxiety with children's vulnerability and the 'problem' of parental power. Cases like Hashmis are examples of parents who are intending to make choices for themselves about how their children ought to be. In this case, concern is impartial by the reality that without treatment, their son will die.

However, in cases where things are less straightforward, such balance weakens. There is an impression that is people who are in not as much of melodramatic conditions are approved to have children who are born to provide tissue that could care for an existing child, then it may to end in tears. The procedure through which a parent formulates a decision about what the child is for is deemed probable to lead to harm. A parent aspiring to decide the sex of a child produces a balance of negativity. The anxiety is not so much with the specific decision parents may make, but with the actuality that they can make such decisions at all.

There is an overstated implication to the significance of individual identity. There are two matters in which the anxiety about identity is predominantly intense, according to Mason. One is the debate in the UK of donor sperm, and the requirement made by the children born this way that they must be acquainted with the identity of the sperm donor. As long as donors are unidentified, it is disputed, they cannot ascertain who they are. In this way, the performance of donors, or those who maintain that donors should permanently be unidentified, come to be observed as negating the individual of his or her individuality. Furthermore, there is a matter about disability and genetic screening. Considering the realism of Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (hereinafter PGD), and the means with which it is employed, it is problematical for opponents to confront the method its prospective potential for being eugenic in old-fashioned sense. An added, influential dispute is that PGD and the methods and concerns that arise from it, injure the significance of personality and identity of disabled people that are already born. The quarrel is that the smaller amount of deaf people who are born, the less respected those deaf people who previously exist are bound to feel. The behaviour taken by those who decide to screen to prevent affected pregnancies are seen as a physical attack on what it represents to be a disabled person. Consequentially, the individual's identity is thus vulnerable by the behaviour of others. Their failure to acknowledge the worth of disability, by deciding to use genetic screening to have an able-bodied child themselves, harms the disabled person. People are seen as so vulnerable that their identity can be injured by performances of people with whom they have no obvious connection at all, and, it is disputed, that their opinions about this have got to be taken into consideration when the morality of the behaviour of others are considered. The reflection of how some disabled people believe happens to be an aspect that ought to be taken into account when pronouncements are made about whether ought to screen a pregnancy.

The deliberation about designer babies, from disability to sex selection, to treating a sick sibling, illustrates an innate distrust of individuals, it is submitted. It is supposed that, in making firm selections about their children, parents will one way or another, damage the sense of individuality and self worth of their own children, or of others in association. It is submitted however, that unquestionably parents are far better positioned to make pronouncements about their children than any court or ethics committee.

The elevation of ideas of human vulnerability that the argument of reproductive technology produces creates a number of genuine, and immediate, problems for society in the present day.

Bibliography

• Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority HFEA Ninth Annual Report (2000) Tables 4.7 and 4.8
• Mason, Smith, Laurie, Law and Medical Ethics, LexisNexis Butterworths 2003
• http://www.prochoiceforum.org.uk

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