Assisted Reproductive Technology
In the United States in the year 2001, 40687 babies were born as a result of 107587 assisted reproductive technology (ART) procedures (Wright, et.al, 2004). It has been estimated that one in six couples in the United States experiences some difficulty conceiving a child, and that 8.5% of married couples (2.3 million couples) in the U.S. are, in fact, infertile (Kilner, et.al, 2000; Wekesser, et.al, 1996). Assisted reproductive technology is becoming more widely available and efficient. In The Reproductive Revolution, it is stated that “considering the various configurations and technologies, there are at least thirty-eight ways to ‘make a baby’ today” (Kilner, et.al, 2000). But along with these innovations come many questions concerning the possible applications of these procedures. With the breadth and complexity of reproductive technology available today, it is important to explore not only the biological, but also the social and ethical implications of these procedures.
Procedures and Methods of Assisted Reproductive Technologies
Artificial Insemination
Artificial insemination is easily the oldest and simplest form of reproductive technology – it has been used for over a century. In this procedure, sperm, obtained through a donation of semen, are artificially introduced into the uterus to fertilize an egg that has been released naturally. Historically, this has been a very confidential procedure; anonymous donors are used, and often even the resulting children are unaware that they have different genetic and social fathers. The first sperm bank was established in the year 1950, and it is estimated that there could be around one million donor insemination adults in the United Sta...
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Cohen, C.B. (1996) New Ways of Making Babies: The Case of Egg Donation. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Kilner, J.F., P.C. Cunningham, and W.D. Hager. (2000) The Reproduction Revolution: A Christian Appraisal of Sexuality, Reproductive Technologies, and the Family. Grand Rapids, Michigan and Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
Strong, Carson. (1997) Ethics is Reproductive and Perinatal Medicine: A New Framework. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Wekesser, C., et.al. (1996) Reproductive Technologies. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press.
Wright, V.C., et.al. (2004, April 30) Assisted Reproductive Technology Surveillance --- United States, 2001. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Surveillance Summaries. 53 (SS01), 1-20.
The journey of exploration to the western territories brought the white man many great things, but they did face some opposition. The US government made plans to explore the Black Hills, after hearing of the gold it contained. This was not an easy task. The Sioux, with strong force, were not giving up their sacred land easily. The only way to gain the territory of the Black Hills was to wage war against the Sioux. The Battle of the Little Big Horn was one battle that the US will never forget. General George Custer led an army of men to take out the Sioux, one of the battalions was completely wiped out including Custer. The Sioux were very strong, but US had a lot more power and technology. Why did we get massacred? This question has been a mystery to many people throughout the years. Sergeant Windolph, of Benteen’s cavalry, and John F. Finerty, from General Crooks cavalry, bring us some personal accounts and memories of this tragedy.
The addition of a child into a family’s home is a happy occasion. Unfortunately, some families are unable to have a child due to unforeseen problems, and they must pursue other means than natural pregnancy. Some couples adopt and other couples follow a different path; they utilize in vitro fertilization or surrogate motherhood. The process is complicated, unreliable, but ultimately can give the parents the gift of a child they otherwise could not have had. At the same time, as the process becomes more and more advanced and scientists are able to predict the outcome of the technique, the choice of what child is born is placed in the hands of the parents. Instead of waiting to see if the child had the mother’s eyes, the father’s hair or Grandma’s heart problem, the parents and doctors can select the best eggs and the best sperm to create the perfect child. Many see the rise of in vitro fertilization as the second coming of the Eugenics movement of the 19th and early 20th century. A process that is able to bring joy to so many parents is also seen as deciding who is able to reproduce and what child is worthy of birthing.
For many years, infertile couples have had difficulty facing the reality that they can not have children. According to Nidus Information Services Incorporated, 6.2 million women in the United States are infertile. This problem leads to many options. A few options have been used for a long period of time: the couple could adopt a child or keep trying to have a child themselves. For those couples that want to have their own children, there are new options arising. In vetro fertilization is an option that gives couples the chance to have a doctor combine the male's sperm and the woman's eggs in a petri dish and implant them into the woman's womb after the artificial conception. This may result in multiple pregnancies - more than five in some cases. This does not only occur in implantation, however. Many times the patient's doctor will ask her to consider selective reduction: aborting a few fetuses to save the ones she can. In a case of multiple pregnancy, selective reduction should be considered an option.
During the past six decades, the human being has been making great strides in science and technology. One of the most developed areas has been the new Assisted Reproduction Techniques (ART). How far will you go? How perfect will your baby be? These are some questions that people do these days when they make the decision to have descendants. The determination of having children and pregnancy is a complex process. In these are involved psychological, social, economic, religious, and even legal factors. The goal of this article is to consider the advantages and disadvantages of using the Assisted Reproduction Techniques (ART).
This gathering of tribes was something that did not happen hastily; tensions had been building and movement toward this unification initially began in 1874. The Battle of the Little Bighorn was an integral part of the Black Hills War, the eventuality of the previous conflicts and tensions that had been building between Native Americans and the United States. An Army expedition led by Custer, a Lieutenant Colonel at the time, found gold in the Black Hills. The United States, however, had signed a treaty with the Lakota Sioux six years earlier that granted the hills to the Sioux Nation. Upon Custer’s discovery of gold, the Grant administration sought to purchase the hills; the attempts were rebuffed by the Sioux because they considered them to be sacred
Pressure is placed on athletes to perform better. The fierce competitive nature of the real sports world in with the peoples excellence has caused athletes to seek alternative means to ...
Women have adamantly battled for political and social reproductive rights since, in particular artificial insemination, have become mainstream phenomena in the recent decade with a focus on rights of women. In fact, doctors have experimented with the procedure for nearly a century. However, with the women¹s liberation movement of the 1970s, physician-assisted and self-insemination has become more and more popular among heterosexual career women and lesbians.
For most of people, the only way to conceive a child is through sexual intercourse between a man and a woman by contributing the egg and the sperm into a woman’s womb. In a common practice, this is the only way on how to conceive a child. However, since the growing of time, with parenthood changing all thanks to the assisted reproductive technology (ART), the usual norm of conceiving a child has changed dramatically over the past decades. Lewis Vaughn describes this process to “address the agonizing problem of infertility and the powerful desire that many people have for their children of their own, especially children with whom they have a biological link” (Vaughn 392). The methods of reproductive technology is always understood under the scientific world, nonetheless, it remains a controversial topic within people.
Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) is a measure used to treat infertility where both sperm and eggs are handled, In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) the most common form has been used since 1981 in the United States. ART may enable individuals who were previously not able to conceive and deliver a child the ability to do so. In 2009 the Suleman Octuplets were born using the IVF technique to a single mother who also had six other children under the same methods. The Suleman Octuplets and their mother, Nadya Suleman, became a focus of interest for many based on the controversy and ethical dilemmas that surrounded their birth.
Test tube babies have long been stigmatized by society as the unnatural results of scientific dabbling. The words `test tube baby' have been used by school children as an insult, and many adults have seen an artificial means of giving birth as something perhaps only necessary for a lesbian woman, or a luxury item only available to the elite few. The reality is that assisted reproductive technologies (ART) have been helping infertile couples have children since 1978.1 The methods of in vitro fertilization, it's variants, and the other ART procedures are ways for persons that would otherwise have no hope of conception to conceive and, in a rapidly growing percentage of cases, give birth to healthy babies. As the technology has developed, the quality and range of assistance has developed as well. At present, the means of assisted reproduction and the capabilities of these procedures has grown at a somewhat dizzying pace. However, thought to the repercussions of the applications of ART are being disregarded to some extent while the public's knowledge and the understanding of embryologists and geneticists surges forward. It is possible given consideration to things such as the morality of these techniques, the unexplored alternative uses of these procedures, and the potential impact they posses that further development is unnecessary and possibly dangerous.
A lot of times, sports seem like a contest of physical skill― a test to see who is the fastest or strongest, who has the best eye or the most endurance, who can jump the highest or can handle the ball the best. What a lot of people don’t know is that there is so much more to a sport than just the muscle and coordination. In order to excel in a sport, an athlete requires a lot of self-discipline, concentration, and self-confidence. It’s the mental factor that makes a difference. Former Olympic gold medal-winning decathlon runner Bruce Jenner once said, “You have to train your mind like you train your body” (Gregoire 1). Success or failure depends on the mental factors just as much as the physical ones. The training of the mind of an athlete is called sports psychology. The use of sports psychology has a huge impact upon an athlete’s performance. The mental skills of a sport are just as important as the physical skills. All professional athletes use sports psychology. “If they aren’t currently using it, it’s almost guaranteed they’ve used it in the past, even if they are unaware they have” (Davis, Stephens, The Exploratorium 129). It’s hard to find an experienced athlete who hasn’t used sports psychology, because without it, they probably wouldn’t be where they are. The use of sports psychology is a crucial step to becoming a successful athlete.
The overwhelming idea of thinness is probably the most predominant and pressuring standard. Tiggeman, Marika writes, “This is not surprising when current societal standards for beauty inordinately emphasize the desirability of thinness, an ideal accepted by most women but impossible for many to achieve.” (1) In another study it is noted that unhealthy attitudes are the norm in term of female body image, “Widespread body dissatisfaction among women and girls, particularly with body shape and weight has been well documented in many studies, so much so that weight has been aptly described as ‘a normative discontent’”. (79) Particularly in adolescent and prepubescent girls are the effects of poor self-image jarring, as the increased level of dis...
In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) has been one of the most controversial medical topics of today. Also commonly known as test tube conception, IVF is a medical procedure of the joining of a woman’s egg and a male’s sperm in a laboratory dish or test tube. “In Vitro” comes from a Latin origin literally meaning “outside the body”, hence the technique. Normally, fertilization takes place inside a woman’s body. The fertilized egg attaches to the lining of the womb and continues to grow until the baby is born nine months later, this process being completely natural and known as an unassisted conception. On the other hand, IVF is a form of ART, assistive reproductive technology. Due to a woman’s infertility or a male’s low sperm count, different measures, like this technique, are taken in order for a couple to bear children.
On July 25 in 1978, a baby was born in England to a family who had been attempting to have a child for over nine years. The child, Louis Brown, was conceived as a result of in vitro fertilization. Brown is known to be the “world’s first [successful] test tube baby” and she, along with her family, were thrust under the spotlight of the media and science world alike (“The World’s First Test Tube Baby”). After the fertilization and birth were both successful, in vitro fertilization, or IVF, became a large topic for debate and medical expansion. Since 1978, it is believed that over 5 million babies have been born from in vitro fertilization (“ART Fact Sheet”). In 2012 alone, 61,000 babies were born via IVF, making this procedure extremely popular (Doucleff). Despite the fact that this process has helped many families have children when they normally would never have the opportunity to, in vitro fertilization is a highly controversially topic that has been subject to debate since it first became a fertility option in 1978.
In the World, there are a lot of couples who are unfortunate and are unable to be able to give birth to children, making them infertile. There are a lot of different methods of contraceptives that infertile parents can use to have a baby, but the one I will be talking about today is IVF: In-vitro fertilization. There are hundreds of thousands of test tube babies living in the world right now, and is a very known method of having babies. According to the Centres for Disease Control (CDC), in the year 2002, about 2%, which is 1.2 million of the 62 million American Women, had a doctor’s appointment related to infertility, and most of those appointments were for IVF. (Source: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/babies-today/) The IVF treatment was invented in order to grant infertile couples the happiness of having a child, however, it is when fertilization occurs outside the body. On Average, 1 in 8 American couples experience infertility, and 1.1 million of these peo...