I’ve created a new category.  I have to admit, I’ve been struggling with how best to do this justice without compromising what I can and should reveal online.

We’ve been trying to have a sequal to A3 for about a year and a half now with no success.  After some additional testing, we’ve discovered that we’re a prime canidate for IVF (InVitro
Fertilization).  For the fertility-challenged, this is a process where an egg and a sperm are combined (either by choice or by force, as in a process called ICSI) and the embryo is transfered back to the woman where, hopefully, it will grow.

The procedure that we’ll be doing is called Blastocyst transfer where, as I understand it, the fertilized eggs are allowed to grow to day five where the embryo has reached blastocyst stage (the embryo goes from 8 cells to a couple of hundred from day 3 to day five).  The result is that the remaining embryos have a better chance of successfully implanting and continuing development than embryos that are traditionally transfered at day 3. The nice thing, in my mind, about this ethically is that embryos are allowed to weed themselves out and by the time you get to day five you usually are left with a limited number of blastocysts (usually around 4, as compared to 8 or more on day three). 

The issues surrounding this are numerous; especially for Christians.  I saw a talk at Educause this year by Ray Kurzweil who made a interesting claim that IT and computers are the undergirding for societal advancement; any advancements made by computers further advancements in other fields that that technological advancements are increasing at a dramatic rate.  I’d never been so close to that as I have with this situation; current reproductive technology was new, and some never existed, 2 years ago.  It seems as though 2004 was a long time back as I have done reading.

Hence the problem, and I hope you’ve gotten this far, is that guidance from a Christian perspective just simply doesn’t exist yet; it’s a moving target.  Questions have arisen at every turn in terms of ethical considerations for us and we’re just beginning to get started.  What I’d like to do with this category is walk through some of those questions and, hopefully, start a dialogue and place where other people of similar convictions can work through these issues. 

To give you a sense of what I’m talking about, check out the next post.