In the US would this be considered abortion by pro-life activists?
Some of us are a bit more comfortable with IVF-like processes because the intent is to foster human life rather than take it, just as it's acceptable to cause an abortion in the process of saving a mother.
But that (fostering human life) is also not a settled debate if the laws in some states are any indication. But debate is hard in jurisdictions where minority opinion can hold sway (like in Florida where a referendum hit 57% for enshrining a right to abortion).
While I'm resolutely pro-choice and don't consider a fertilized cell to be "human", (before I continue I want to be clear, I 100% support these types of procedures in the article) there is eventually going to be a grey area where debate needs to happen before we hit Gattaca-style dystopian editing.
PS This is not meant to argue against your view per se, which I disagree with but respect. I mean to illustrate how very quickly this gets messy and rational debate flies out the window. But that's the same with anything political in today's climate... :-/
It seems you mean to imply that you are against the destruction of a fertilized viable embryo, but then the rest of your message seems to suggest that it isn’t that important.
How so? They're removing the pro-nuclei before they fuse (which is when a new human, specifically their first sovereign cell and their DNA, would be formed). So even if you consider life to start at conception, this is precisely just before that still, meaning there's no human being destroyed here - unless I misunderstand the biology going on (or the article is not correct).
The article seems clear. Another comment [1] suggested it should be possible to do as you suggested but I certainly do not know the science in this space.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44617740
> The spindle transfer method transplants the mother's egg's DNA into the donor's egg before fertilization
The article further refers to "donor" and "parent" embryos. This is also not correct as far as I undestand, eggs turn embryos once the fertilization process completes, and a zygote is present. [1] Even this could be considered misleading as there's also an "embryo proper" which forms about a week later still, but I wanted to keep to the reference frame of the GP.
I found [2] particularly informative because it outlines a multi-stage process through which an embryo goes, the earliest of which is fertilization as you described. My reading in the article, and perhaps relying too much on the artwork, seems to put the process described there at stage 1b-1c since the pronuclei looks to be in the process of fusing. My conclusion in cross-referencing [1] is that your "embryo proper" is around stage 4-5 and would have been implanted?
> They're removing the pro-nuclei before they fuse (which is when a new human, specifically their first sovereign cell and their DNA, would be formed).
I wish I'd had the context to appreciate this before my earlier reply. :)
I also enjoyed reading parts of [3] and imagine there is probably better information nearly 60 years later.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_embryonic_development
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_stages
[3] https://publicationsonline.carnegiescience.edu/publications_...
No, I believe what happened is that they made their mitochondrial changes before the pronuclei fusion, and inserted this modified egg into the womb. There it the continued on with the fertilization process, finishing up, creating the zygote, etc.
The embryo-proper bit was only relevant to the "from what point is it a human life" part of this, it is not relevant to the procedure specifically. That comes a whole week after fertilization I believe.
(the same as with pro-choicers and third trimester abortions for example)
Frankly, advice on having children from celibate men doesn't need special consideration from women.
I say this as someone who was at least raised Catholic and still has an affection for the faith.
https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/docume...
https://www.vatican.va/content/catechism/en/part_three/secti...
That doesn't mean the Church's teaching isn't final and binding.
Teachings can be reversed and they are absolutely not binding. These disputes are supposed to be done in humility with the assumption that the church is probably right, but that's pretty much the same as arguing with Linux kernel devs...
https://www.catholic.com/qa/what-is-the-difference-between-d...
People who have trouble naturally conceiving a child?
It is a tool, like guns, bombs and medicine.
I'm OK with being alone, that doesn't make me right or wrong.
It does mean I have courage of conviction though.
It's got nothing to do with right or wrong.
Not agreeing with something maybe because of courage, cowardice, nonchalance or anything else.
Openly disagreeing with the in-group cannot be nonchalance, almost by definition (if you don't care, why bother having an opinion?), and it can't be cowardice if the issue matters.
Where did you come from?
Rather kids deserve parents.
It's literally an inversion.
Having biological kids is a hard-wired instinct, and one of the very basic survival-of-the-genes things. I have no idea what you mean by kids deserving parents. There are no kids without parents to begin with.
Men's sexual drive, for example, is tuned to fairly rapey if not for a "patriarchal" society that crushes this drive through the threat of a girls father beating a boy to a pulp. Stats are pretty clear here too wrt sex workers and their relationship to their fathers.
And IVF is a tragedy of rented wombs, unfulfilled motherhood dreams, expensive and painful surgeries almost exclusively brunt by women whilst profited by men.
But I'm not worried. A society that inverts the child-parent merit is one whose open loop gain is less than one. It's pretty obvious why: those who think children are deserved are unlikely to have the ability of self-sacrifice to want more than the one, maybe two kids.
Children are celebrated. Rape is abhorred. I have no idea what you mean by IVF is rented wombs and profited by men. Are you confusing IVF to surrogacy?