Word: embryos
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Ultimately, Homer rebels against his teacher: "You can call it a fetus, or an embryo, or the products of conception, thought Homer Wells, but whatever you call it, it's alive." He announces that he wants nothing more to do with abortions...
...consisting of services rather than manufacturing, has resulted in a difference of occupations but not of attitude; people are more than ever the bewildered children of progress. The past year alone has produced enough scientific inventiveness to shake the spirit for a lifetime: the first baby from a frozen embryo, surrogate mothers, genetic transfers between animals, a record number of heart transplants, an animal heart transplant, another artificial heart. The central ailment of the age may simply be Arnold's writ larger...
...past two hundred years, the view that the embryo may not be fully human has been in near total eclipse. All modern Popes have opposed abortion from the instant of conception, and the Second Vatican Council termed abortion "an unspeakable crime." In recent years the church has shown a willingness to cast a fresh eye at the morality of nuclear war and capital punishment, a trend that may reinforce its desire to protect embryonic life...
...creation of extra embryos raises a number of delicate problems. Aside from the question of whether they have a "right" to be implanted (most experts deny it), doctors say they are needed for research. Some even favor creating embryos deliberately for the sake of research. But what exactly is "research"? Ideally, it is some experimental treatment that will help the embryo itself. Some states-Minnesota, for; example-prescribe that any experimentation must be known to be harmless. A number of authorities also believe that experimentation should be limited to the first 14 days after fertilization. There are scientists, however...
There are also tricky questions posed by the financing of the new technology. Dr. John Buster of the UCLA School of Medicine has been working since 1979 to develop a technique of embryo transplants for women who are unable to conceive but able to carry a child to term. The husband's sperm is used to impregnate a woman artificially; the embryo is then flushed out and implanted in the man's wife. The first two babies to be produced by this method were born this year...