IS A FROZEN EMBRYO A HUMAN
BEING?
An Ohio couple who lost their fertilized embryo
when the tank it was being stored in accidentally failed, is asking an Ohio
court to declare their lost embryo as as a person, rather than as property.
In
early March 2018, about 4,000 frozen embryos being stored at the University
Hospital Ahuja Medical Center in Beachwood, Ohio, were lost as a result of the
failure in the tank.
Custom
Biogenic Systems, the company that supplied the storage tank to the hospital,
said in April after an initial review that it was likely due to human error snd
not by their tank.
Wendy
and Rick Penniman, among the hundreds of couples who also lost embryos in that
particular tank, filed a claim against
the hospital on March in the Cuyahoga
County court asking for a judge to declare that "the life of a person
begins at the moment of conception," therefore making "the legal
status of an embryo as that of a person.”
In
an effort "to have a child at a later date," the Penniman couple had
begun the process of in vitro fertilization, harvesting and fertilizing the
eggs with the hospital "safe
guarding them" in April 2014, according to the claim. Wendy Penniman then
had three "viable" embryos frozen.
The storage tank that the
embryos were had stored in experienced a "significant temperature
increase" on March 3 of this year, which destroyed the viability of the
embryos, according to their claim filed in the court.
Although the hospital
"publicly" accepted responsibility for the tank failure, the
Penninmans accused the hospital of treating the embryos as "chattel"
rather than patients, according to their court filings. The hospital had simply
offered to reimburse the couple for their cost of the production of the
embryos, according to their claim. The question in the minds of the Penninmans;
was the offer enough?
"They've essentially
denied her the ability to continue motherhood," Rick said in an interview
with "GMA"
Wendy said, :
"Although we're still grieving, we're at the point where we're just ready
to take it as far as we need to because it's the same way that we would fight
for our children that are here and fight for the ones that we've lost and do it
for other parents too."
On May 18, Cuyahoga County
Judge Stuart Friedman dismissed the lawsuit, stating that in his opinion, the couple's frozen
embryo did not deserve the same legal protections as a child.
"The parents may
believe that the embryos that they created are already persons, but that is a
matter of faith or of their personal beliefs, not of science and not of
law," Friedman wrote.
Judge Friedman is also overseeing
60 lawsuits being filed against the hospital in Cuyahoga County.
I suspect that if the judge
rules that the embryos are not human beings, the matter will go to a court of
appeal and possibly to the Supreme Court of the United States.
As an interesting
note; the Supreme court of the United
States ruled back in the eighteen hundreds that Blacks were not human beings
but instead were property of the whites. Of course that was a stupid decision.
It should come to no surprise to anyone reading this article l that all the
members of that court were white.
The
question as to when the physical material dimension of a human being begins
is strictly a scientific question, and fundamentally should only be answered by
human embryologists and not by philosophers, bioethicists, theologians,
politicians, x-ray technicians, or obstetricians and gynecologists and
certainly not by a judge.
To
accurately see why a sperm or an oocyte are considered as only possessing human
features, and not to be classed as living human beings themselves, one needs to
look at the basic scientific facts involved in the processes of gametogenesis and of fertilization.
It may
help to keep in mind that the products of gametogenesis and fertilization are
very different. The products of gametogenesis are mature sex gametes with only
23 instead of 46 chromosomes. The product of fertilization in a living human being
has 46 chromosomes. Gametogenesis refers to the maturation of germ cells,
resulting in gametes. Fertilization refers to the initiation of a new human
being which is not a real human being at that particular moment.
The new
single-cell that is then created immediately after fertilization subsequently
produces specifically human proteins and enzymes and obviously are not carrot
or frog enzymes and proteins. The cell genetically directs his/her own (depending
on the sex) growth and development. In fact, this genetic growth and
development has been proven not to be directed by the mother.
Finally, this new human organism that is
the single-cell human zygoteis which then becomes a biologically individual
is a living organism which then becomes an individual member of the human
species. This doesn’t mean that it is a fully developed human being. Let me explain
why.
There is a TV program
called Forged in Fire. The
contestants compete against each other to make knives or swords from pieces of
metal. Until the knives or swords have been made in their entirety, they are
simply pieces of mental. One cannot call them knives or swords at that state of
their creation until the creation of them is complete.
I know I am right on that
point but does it not follow then that until a fetus in the womb of a woman is
complete, that fetus is not fully a human being? And if I am not wrong on that
point, does it not follow that a frozen
embryo is also not a human being?
If
I am able to get a copy of the transcript of the ruling of the court of appeal
with respect to this interesting case, I will download it in a future
article.
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