GESTIÓN EN SALUD PÚBLICA: BioEdge: British grandparents use dead son’s sperm to create child

domingo, 16 de septiembre de 2018

BioEdge: British grandparents use dead son’s sperm to create child

BioEdge: British grandparents use dead son’s sperm to create child

Bioedge

British grandparents use dead son’s sperm to create child

by Michael Cook | 15 Sep 2018 |

Another fascinating chapter in the unfolding history of the Reproductive Revolution, this time about posthumous sperm extraction.

A few years ago an unnamed 26-year-old unmarried man was killed in a motorcycle accident in the UK and his body was not discovered for two days. His wealthy parents, who are in their 50s, immediately set to work. He had been their only son and they desperately wanted a male heir.

They engaged a urologist to extract sperm from their son’s corpse. This was frozen and a year later couriered to the California IVF clinic of Dr Jeffrey Smotrich. The man’s parents chose an egg donor whose profile matched an imagined spouse for their son.

Four embryos were created and Dr Smotrich performed gender selection to select a male. This was then implanted in an American surrogate and the child was born in 2015. After the necessary paperwork was completed to ensure that the child was legally theirs, the grandparents returned home.

There are serious legal issues hanging over all the participants in this drama. Extracting sperm posthumously without consent is probably a criminal offence. Professor Allan Pacey, a former chairman of the British Fertility Society, pointed out that “The clinician who extracted the sperm is in breach of the law as is the facility which stored and exported the sample.” Gender selection is also illegal in the UK (but not in California).

Dr Smotrich said he had no ethical qualms about his role and said that the remaining sperm and three embryos were in storage. “I'm not here to judge who should be a parent,” he told the Daily Mail. “In this case, from what the parents told me, their son absolutely wanted children. I was happy to help a tragic story end with a happy outcome.”

The case created a furore in the British media. Barrie Drewitt-Barlow, one of Britain’s first gay fathers, commented on Good Morning Britain: “This woman was going through grief at losing her child and she wanted to make her son live on and this was her way of doing it. Who are we to judge? The technology’s there why not use it?”

Sunday, September 16, 2018

Last year Sydney journalist Miranda Devine interviewed Australia’s first out-of-the-closet transsexual, Carlotta, a cabaret performer and TV actor. Carlotta had what is now called “gender-affirming” surgery in the early 1970s and built a career in show biz. Her advice to teenagers who want to transition to the opposite sex: “Don’t give the child hormones. Wait till 18. You shouldn’t fool around with the body until you’re mature.”

This seems common sense. However, as an article in JAMA Pediatrics (see below) reports, girls as young as 13 are receiving mastectomies to treat their gender dysphoria. Two years later (ie, when they’re 15) the transteens are supposedly as happy as Larry with their “top job”.

This doesn’t seem common sense. How can a girl of 13 give truly informed consent to a life-changing operation which removes both of her breasts? As a growing number of “detransitioners” bear witness, this is crazy. “I’m a real-live 22-year-old woman with a scarred chest and a broken voice and a 5 o’clock shadow because I couldn’t face the idea of growing up to be a woman,” says Carla in a YouTube video.

The risk of turning a young girl’s life into a misery is just too great to allow teen mastectomies before adulthood. In fact, it’s hard to describe it as anything other than child abuse by her physicians and psychologists. What do you think?