enerbol and Infertility--Female

Topics: Animal Experimentation; Beginning of Human Life; Compensation and Redress; Embryo Research; Embryo, Mammalian; Ethics Committees, Research; Ethics, Medical; Female; Fertilization in Vitro; Humans; Infertility, Female; Informed Consent; Life; Morals; Oocyte Donation; Personhood; Public Policy; Research; Resource Allocation; Risk; Risk Assessment; Tissue Donors

Being inherently different from any other lifesaving organ transplant, uterine transplantation does not aim at saving lives but supporting the possibility to generate life. Unlike the kidneys or the liver, the uterus is not specifically a vital organ. Given the non-lifesaving nature of this procedure, questions have been raised about its feasibility. The ethical dilemma revolves around whether it is worth placing two lives at risk related to surgery and immunosuppression, amongst others, to enable a woman with absolute uterine factor infertility to experience the presence of an organ enabling childbirth. In the year 2000, the first uterine transplantation, albeit unsuccessful, was performed in Saudi Arabia from where it has spread to the rest of the world including Sweden, the United States and now recently India. The procedure is, however, still in the preclinical stages and several ethical, legal, social and religious concerns are yet to be addressed before it can be integrated into the clinical setting as standard of care for women with absolute uterine factor infertility.

Topics: Bioethical Issues; Female; Humans; India; Infertility, Female; Life; Organ Transplantation; Reproduction; Reproductive Techniques, Assisted; Risk; Safety; Saudi Arabia; Sweden; Tissue Donors; United States; Uterus

Topics: Child; Female; Follow-Up Studies; Humans; Infertility; Infertility, Female; Life; Pediatric Obesity; Stress, Psychological

The alternative methods in human reproduction do nothing else than try to help an individual or a couple to achieve the primordial goal of life: perpetuation of the species. These methods try to reconstruct the biologic premises necessary for perpetuation by various means such as: a. in vitro fecundation correlated or not with artificial fecundation with donor, ovocyte donation, embryo donation, borrowed mother; b. intratubular transfer of gametes; c. unnatural circumstances, i.e., the possibility that men be a host for the embryo up to term, a hypothesis which for the time being is possible only in science-fiction. The birth of Louisa Brown in 1978 was the border between hope and certainty, between dream and pragmatism. Thus, the alternative methods of reproduction have become routine in the medical life and penetrated into the conscience of an ever greater number of people but at the same time have raised an immense number of questions regarding the status of the embryo and the foetus, but more important, of the child born under these circumstances. These questions await answers both from medicine and the law and have to be within the limits of the common sense. Those who participate in the in vitro fecundation programs should not lose their quality of being human, should pay respect to the nature and the natural, encourage hope and be moral.

Topics: Beginning of Human Life; Bioethics; Contracts; Embryo Research; Female; Humans; Infertility, Female; Infertility, Male; Life; Male; Oocyte Donation; Physician's Role; Pregnancy; Prognosis; Reproductive Techniques; Spermatozoa; Time Factors

This paper is addressed to practitioners. It seeks to acquaint them with 'ethical' arguments against their work which, because they are simple and plausible, persuade many people. These arguments are briefly rehearsed and as briefly examined. A more positive ethics of in-vitro fertilization is presented which seeks to respect (a) what is known in the relevant science and done in developing practice; (b) the inseparability of research from clinical application; (c) a moral tradition of long-standing which relates the protection of fetal life pari passu with its own morphological growth towards maturity; (d) the moral sense of properly informed persons whose judgements we trust in other areas of life. Practitioners themselves are to be defended as the proper moral agents (that is, to be entrusted with decisions) provided that they are careful (a) to keep public confidence by means of a corporate self-discipline; (b) to keep faith with patients and research subjects; (c) to maintain mutual trust between research scientists and clinical practitioners; (d) to safeguard the liberty of disciplined enquiry, of purposeful curiosity, as being inherent in the notion of a science, necessary to therapeutic advance, and proper to the nature of man. The author writes from within the theological tradition of the Church of England.

Topics: Abortion, Legal; Beginning of Human Life; Culture; Embryo Research; Ethics, Medical; Female; Fertilization in Vitro; Humans; Infertility, Female; Life; Moral Obligations; Personhood; Philosophy, Medical; Religion and Medicine; Research; Social Control, Formal; Value of Life

Topics: Animals; Fallopian Tubes; Female; Humans; Infertility; Infertility, Female; Life