My Mommy Is My Daddy Is My Mommy
Stem cell research has the potential to change the standard gendered parental relationships by making it possible for women to produce sperm and eggs from stem cells say British researchers in the Globe and Mail.
Better yet, a new Canadian "mockumentary" called The Baby Formula brings to the public's attention the fact that some day in the future human reproduction may be markedly different than it is today.
So what's the big deal? So we will be able to produce sperm from women's bone marrow or other stem cell sources and reproduction will no longer require men. Lesbian couples will no longer rely upon sperm donors to have children who at best could only be 50 percent biologically theirs.
Really, the social hurdles shouldn't be the ones that are hardest to overcome, but rather the research ethics challenges. To know whether or not these new "sperm" are viable, embryos made with female only DNA will have to be created and implanted into women and brought to term. There are serious risks with performing this research, and inherently, the women signing up to do this research will be those most desperate to have a child. Thus, the most critical concerns will be: will these women care about informed consent or just having a child?
The ethics concerns here are numerous, but the social ones should not be. Giving same-sex couples a chance to have biologically related children is an important opportunity that ought not be missed--overcoming the ethics concerns is really the only issue that SHOULD have been addressed in such a movie, even a "mockumentary."
Summer Johnson, PhD
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Summer, I agree with your argument that it should not about the social implications ( although those more conservative than I am will disagree) However, the informed consent issue is no different than most other situations when a 'patient' is desperate. Perhaps this issue will help open the door wider on that discussion. Protecting those with the most to lose, those with the biggest stake continues to be an ethical problem in medicine. Doctors want to peform their treatments, people want their miracles.
- by BENITA on Jun 23, 2009 at 9:08 PM | link
This topic has a lot of gray areas. But more than the ethical and moral stances I feel that the positives and negatives should be weighed up, and a decision made purely from that stance. Probably cause less hassles that way too
- by Alex on Jun 24, 2009 at 9:57 AM | link
I find significant errors with Dr. Johnson's reasoning and subsequent conclusions. First, Dr. Johnson presumes that the "most critical concern" will be to ascertain whether the desire to have a child interferes with a woman's ability to provide consent that is optimally free from coercion. This presumption begs the question that the research per se presents no ethical problems. This presumption rests on the "technological imperative"--if we can do it, we SHOULD do it", and this "imperative" has not and does not serve humanity well as an ethical principle to judge research as ethical. Thus, the "most critical concern" is not the biopsychosocial complications of informed consent, but the multitude of biopsychosocial concerns that inform the ongoing ethical debates about embryonic stem cells, assisted reproduction technologies, family structures and dynamics, and human flourising.
Second, Dr. Johnson appears to commit the logical fallacy of creating a false dichotomy when stating, " The ethics concerns here are numerous, but the social ones should not be." This implies that social concerns are not ethical concerns, which is patently false. Humans and their interactions define "society" and "ethics". The link between society and ethics remains inextricable, regardless of reference to a specific sphere of human activity.
- by Greg on Jun 26, 2009 at 12:43 PM | link