Embryo Adoption: An Opportunity for Life

The world began a new revolution during the second half of the twentieth century. This revolution centered not on industry, but on biotechnology. Researchers unlocked the mysteries of procreation and genetics. The promise of science seduced common sense about the value of human life. Postmodern pluralism embraced the modernist idea of utopia through technology at the cost of the helpless. Yet civilization is no closer to utopia than it was 50 years ago. Instead, we debate a whole host of new ethical dilemmas. Several debates focus on the creation, storage and eventual destiny of millions of human embryos. Hundreds of thousands of lives wait in frozen limbo for parents, politicians, theologians, and scientists to decide whether they live or die. Embryo adoption provides a chance at life. Unfortunately, several ethical obstacles delay acceptance of this option. This paper attempts to address these obstacles and provide justification for embryo adoption. To better understand the ethical issues, I review the history of the embryo dilemma and consider the opposing views on embryo adoption. Historical Development of Assisted Reproduction Fertility clinics became commonplace less than 30 years ago. However, assisted reproduction technologies (ART) have a much longer history. Scientists attempted in vitro fertilization of mammalian oocytes as early as 1878. In 1954, Charles Thibault documented the first fertilization of rabbit oocytes completely in vitro. Then in 1959, M.C. Chang successfully transferred cleaving rabbit embryos, fertilized in vitro, into surrogate does and produced normal offspring (Bavister, 2002). Twenty years later, Dr. Robert Edwards, Dr. Patrick Steptoe, and Jean Purdy achieved the in vitro fertilization (IVF) birth of Louise Brown i