So the clinics of the "intellectual dishonesty" circumvent the law 40
Roberto Colombo
The introduction, in 1978, the extracorporeal fertilization procedures (IVF, IVF) for the generation of human embryos to be transferred into the uterus of the woman (embryo transfer; ET) in order to achieve a pregnancy, otherwise impossible or unlikely because of one or more factors of female infertility or male, was celebrated in recent weeks on the occasion of the 2010 Nobel Prize for Medicine to Robert G. Edwards, who was a human IVF pioneers.
Like any "new" biotechnology, this has resulted in a change not only in clinical procedures relating to the treatment of a disease, but created a "look" different in the practice of biology and medicine, "transforming" - so to speak - the position of the researcher and physician, who chooses to use this technical capability, with regard to life human, sometimes without care professionals warn that initially the scope of this cultural and social change.
Among the consequences of IVF-ET was introduced during the last quarter of the last century there is also the practical possibility, hitherto impossible (and also, according to many, unthinkable), designed to manipulate in the laboratory in the early days of its development, starting from fertilization when the embryo consists of a single cell up to little more than a hundred cells. The human being at the beginning of its existence, which until a few decades ago it was "hidden" and "protected" in the female genital tract - the Fallopian tube and the uterine cavity - and, before implantation endometrium, also could not be "observed" indirectly through the U.S., has now become "objects" available for all kinds of biological studies, invasive or noninvasive.
grown at 37 degrees Celsius and in the presence of oxygen, in a special culture medium containing various substances, the embryo is observed at the light microscope, its cells are measured and counted according to the hours they spend in the making Contact the oocyte with the sperm, and even, at times, taken (or a few of them) to analyze cytogenetically and molecularly.
The embryos - usually more than one per cycle of ovarian stimulation, egg retrieval and IVF - are classified in different standards (a process which the British call "embryo scoring": literally, "to score embryo") based on their morphology and their development over time, only those considered "viable" (able to continue to grow regularly and to implant in the endometrium after ET) is transferred through a thin catheter into the uterine cavity of women during the early days of the luteal phase of their ovarian cycle, a number that is decided by the team medically assisted procreation (PMA) with the consent of the mother, given his age, any previous "failures" of IVF-ET, the risk of multiple pregnancy it is prepared to accept and legislation in force in the country (in Italy, no more than three embryos). Despite
monitoring the "quality" of the embryos (the term, unfortunately, has entered the jargon of the PMA and is another bitter fruit of cultural drift introduced in the anthropology of human procreation by IVF-ET) generated in vitro and "selected for transfer into the uterus, usually done only by microscopic examination (Without biopsy device), may seem so severe, it can not exclude that one or more embryos for ET is affected by a chromosomal abnormality (which may relate to the number of chromosomes, 23 pairs from different euploide of a subject, or their morphology, such as translocations and other aberrations karyological) or by a defect in genomic (pathogenetic), able to affect the growth and health of the unborn.
Sometimes, in a limited number of cases, the defect is already present in the family home of the father and / or mother and there is a certain probability that it can be transmitted to the son or daughter. More frequently, the fear for the birth of a child by IVF-ET is not healthy generation, referring to the overall probability of occurrence of diseases by chromosomal abnormalities (like Down syndrome, that of Ullrich-Turner and others) or gene mutations associated with these population in which the intended parents belong. There is, finally, the not unreasonable fear that the same manipulation of gametes and embryos associated with FIV may have caused, albeit rarely, conceived of chromosomal defects.
the "desire for a child" just to make infertile couples who seemed willing to resort to IVF-ET when it was originally made available in clinical practice and only to respond to which some doctors had initially dedicated to this new procedure obstetrician-gynecologist, was later added "the desire for a healthy child."
What, in itself, legitimate - health is a precious man and "desire" for our children as well as for ourselves is a positive suction - if the "desire" not to turn into a "claim" in against the PMA to induce some of its specialists (biologists, geneticists and physicians), which defer to such a "claim" to introduce a "selective filter" of embryos, before ET, no longer tied exclusively their "vitality" (as it emerges from the cell division, the morphological regularity and other observational parameters), but based on the "quality" karyotypes and / or genotype of the embryo.
we like it or not designated by this term, slipping from the "desire" (or "invocation") to "claim" (or "condition") of health for every child born through IVF-ET is a shift in direction eugenics capable of devastating effects of PMA, at a social level, in the recognition of equality in dignity and fundamental rights of all human beings begin life on this earth, regardless of from their genetic and biological characteristics (physiological or pathological) of their body and their mind.
In our country, the law prohibits 40 on PMA (art. 13), the genetic selection of embryos during IVF-ET. Yielding to pressure (or feeding the "demand": it happens too) of infertile couples to have their intended selected in vitro before implantation in the uterus to exclude those carrying genomic or chromosomal defects, some Italian cities of LDCs have decided to experimental protocols applied to prepare studies or tested in other nations for the "diagnosis preimplantatoria" (IPR) on embryos.
Some of them, trusting on judicial decisions that disrupt the spirit and letter of the law, are gearing up for the "classical" DPI, that performed on the embryo in most cells (pre-morula stage or morula), which involves the removal of one or more of them , an invasive procedure that, among other things, is not without some risk for the regular development of the embryo biopsy. A few other centers, however, have tried to circumvent the prohibition of Act 40 giving rise to a diagnosis performed on the female gamete, the oocyte, in place of the embryo (not technically possible to perform genomic analysis on the male gamete or karyotypes, sperm, without destroying it).
This is a technique that involves the collection and analysis of one or both of the so-called "polar" (corpuscles located in the space under the zona pellucida that covers the egg). The first one contains half the chromosomes of the mother that her son will not be transmitted through fertilization. For difference from the maternal set, so you can know (not without a certain margin of error due to the phenomenon of "recombinant gene" that only takes place after the sperm has penetrated the oocyte) if the embryo that will result from fertilization will or not a genetic defect. If it is the bearer
the defect, the egg is not fertilized and you will proceed to analyze other, looking for a free. If we confine ourselves to the collection and analysis of the first polar body, no action is taken on yet conceived (no fertilization has occurred), but only on the germ cell of the woman, and this does not violate the dictates of the law regarding the 40 testing, selection and destruction of human embryos generated through IVF (Articles 13-14).
To reduce the margin of error of this type of IPR, other centers of PMA have decided to analyze the second of the two polar bodies, which is formed after meiosis stage where you can a "recombinant gene", ie when the oocyte penetration by sperm has already occurred. After analysis of the second polar body was born from IVF in Italy, in September, the first child selected for the exemption from chromosomal defects.
Contrary to the improper use of the term "oocyte," he suggested to the layman, the selection was made on the female gamete before fertilization (if so, would not have been possible to analyze the second polar body) but after, that is designed on the stage of a single cell (known pronuclear zygote "). As it is located in the first hours of development, it is of a human being that embodies the genetic inheritance received from his mother and father, that all information necessary for its growth and its implantation in the womb.
Subtleties biological and philosophical, some would say. In fact, it's about loyalty (the time it would be called "intellectual honesty") with which you look at the reality of the beginning of individual human life that is played all the respect and love you have towards it, is from parents asking for medicine to be helped to conceive a child, both by doctors who are at the service of parents and, in doing so, even one who gives them a child: the Mystery from which our being and that of every other man who comes into the world.
That man is not reducible to a "product" to be selected - even if, unfortunately, is not created by the Act for the love of a mother and a father, but through a biotechnological process - is the same reason that suggests it: our life is not the sum of quantity and quality that are not inherent to anything and are suspended in a vacuum to be "available to be taken or left, but it is in a subject, an" I "unique and unrepeatable, which alone can give substance to everything that belongs to him, including its quantity and quality of biological and psychological.
One subject, then, that needs to be accepted for what it is, not for what he has or has not (yet). This is the man who, at the beginning of its existence, the IVF-ET has given him: a heavy responsibility for those who decide to use them, towards which the company may not declare that extraneous or "neutral." The civilization of a nation is not measured, perhaps by its ability to defend and promote the rights of those whose cry is not "poor voice of a man who does not exist", but quietly pleading "that the breath of life has no end "?
SOURCE: http://www.ilsussidiario.net/
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