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Listen: The Trouble With Embryos

"This sounds a lot like that battle of thoughts going on inside Fiona mind about her embryos if they were destroyed then what if my child needs something from a sibling medically in the future and I've just destroyed that option and then also what it might sense of identity on the flip side she might be completely and utterly with her identity and I'm just thinking well it's a single children out there exactly right exactly right it's hard to see how these complex questions could be easily on a single form Ivy clinics themselves also bear some responsibility for helping parents decide what to do after all they make money from it with IVF treatments and the storage of excess embryos Louise Johnson again in my experience clinics are very supportive of patients is when they having trouble deciding what to do with your embryos and you say thinking about donating their embryos clean counselors will spend considerable time with paypal helping them to make sure that that decision is the right one for them in fact the national health and Medical Research Council's ethical guidelines for IVF clinic state that they we must discuss with patients their options for using or discarding embryos but the level of counseling clinics a legally required to offer varies across Australia and some argue that this counseling is more focused on the start of the IVF process than the end look I think that's also the focus of paper taking treatment as well that's the focus is to try for baby but one of the medicine needs to be coveting canceling in Victoria and elsewhere he's what to do with embryos at the end of the day if treatment is successful or not successful so it is a matter that is coveting canceling right from the Gar so let's come to another option you have a small proportion of people decide to donate the embryos they won't use no one else who wants to have a child that might be a family member or it might be a total stranger they really want us to have a chance at having a baby maybe and and they would prefer their embryos to be used by others then allowing them to succumb on auto bar tree bench but that's not a common path people choose to take so in Victoria in two thousand seventeen to eighteen they were only seventy embryo donors compares with four hundred and twenty four sperm donors and three hundred dollars so the number of embryos donald is much smaller and why do you think that is I think it's a really hard decision they know that any children born or before to nick siblings if there are in children and that's hard decision to make let's come back then to the two women you've met in this program funeral and Desa neither of them want to donate their embryos to other families that just not comfortable with the idea of someone else raising what would be the potential children Fiona feels a great sense of responsibility for her embers the joined the spam dialup would never eight and would never have created those embryos I created them so giving them to somebody else to raise a family where I'm not I've got no sane or I'm not aware of what sort of parents apparent though built sort of family situation you know what if I go to a family or a situation that puts him in Ham then I would feel very responsible about that of course I'd Never Nari but it would always be there Jessica on the other hand says that she's been advised that the law in her State Victoria prevents her from donating her embryos to someone else because we've got Dana Sperm we count on donate to anybody unless the law has changed or I think it has correlative more than us for them and I said to her even if a Kudankulam to you because there's a diner involved in Victoria Dan can legally donate sperm to up to ten women that number varies around Australia. Gab Kovacs is a professor of obstetric gynecology at Monash unit acidy as we had last week he was also the clinical director at the Queen Victoria hospitals. IVF program back in the eighties then he helped create some of Australia's first frozen embryos for infertile couples the couple's Godal over Kabul the Women Guthrie stimulated saw monitoring surgery and the hassle and the expansion credit is embryos and then when they reach their five-year use-by date to then have them discarded to me a terrible waste he's opinion is donating your excess embryos to another person or couple wanting a child is a good option and always tried to encourage couples to consider donating and not can understand how couples who understand the pain of subjectivity who understand how difficult is to create these ambers war they don't donate their embryos to somebody else this Rodney having destroyed and when we ask people about this today are now we don't want somebody else bringing up children but I'm sure there's other ways with that could be involved the children and be updated and have some sort of a situation where they can visible if they want to but to give us the chance of law rather than being left on the inch to succumb okay so let's come to another option the final we're considering on science friction today and that is to donate excess embryos to scientific research what does that involve before here from an IV scientist here's Fiorina's first response to that idea instantly for I'm not having any conflict whatsoever I instantly just thought of horrible scenes from old movies of crazy scientific research that might happen Dan and again the fact that even though I don't see them as children I do see myself as being responsible for them desa maybe watch the same movies because she owes so has similar worries about embryo research limbs might grow that that to me I couldn't carp tonight at that we're doing that it just worries me that and I put electric shocks in that soulful of just thinking I'm just thinking I watch too much science fiction professor Alan Trounson helped pioneer the F. treatment in the eighties and he wants to demystify how scientists use embryos in research and locate the just short period of time the embryo is destroyed really by the processes of the research but they would be destroyed anyway if our terminated and that seems better than just disposing of them which is just to do that then to look at some data that you might mind from those embryos in the process of scientific study leader in stem cell research and he was involved in the public debate over whether we should extract stem cells from donated IVF embryos today there's less demand for embryos donations in scientific research because we now have other ways to develop embryonic stem cells from adult cells but they're still crucial for helping just to understand human disease and early development Professor Johnson says embryo studies can also be used to help improve the treatment of the modern be used to create a new technique luckily trip occasion where that's sides you know millions of embryos but you have to do the research in the beginning and you can't just sort of magic that's an area focused on the possibilities of replacing and repairing diseased cells organs and body parts I think it donating embryos for research bionic stem cells to work ahead of May an Ip so I- cells or induced pluripotent stem cells can be converted into different cells in the body you to perform different functions and that is the core element for so therapies for regenerative medicine now the lots"

Science Friction

The Trouble With Embryos

Science Friction

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The Trouble With Embryos

Science Friction

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Fiona Queen Victoria Hospitals Gab Kovacs Australia Monash Unit Acidy Professor Clinical Director Three Hundred Dollars