LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2007, Page 383

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THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS 383

sexual intercourse. Sperm often comes from the woman’s husband,
but donor sperm from outside a marriage is also used. This tech-
nique changes the way that sperm is made available, but it does not
change the basic genetic faet that the embryo conceived has a new
set of genetic instructions that combines a set of genes from the egg
and a set from the sperm.'*

Modern day surrogacy is the practice of having a woman who
is not intended to be the social mother of the child provide the womb
in which the child develops until he or she is able to be born. Embryos
can be conceived in the surrogate’s womb by natural intercourse or
more likely by artificial insemination. In this case the surrogate’s egg
contributes half of the genetic instructions for the child. In vitro fer-
tilization and the technology of cloning (see below) make it possible
to introduce into the womb an embryo that is in no way genetically re-
lated to the surrogate. In the usual practice of in vitro fertilization the
child will have a new set of genetic instructions combining genes from
whatever egg and sperm were brought together to form the embryo.
As we will see, cloning changes the way the set of genetic instructions
comes into the new life.'®

In vitro fertilization (IVF) refers to a variety of highly sophisti-
cated techniques whereby an embryo is brought about outside a
woman’s body. Several different methods are used for transferring
the embryo into the woman’s womb. The usual practice of in vitro
fertilization changes the place and the way that sperm and egg come
together, but this practice does not change the basic genetic fact that
the embryo has a new set of genetic instructions resulting from the
fusion of sperm and egg. Jn vitro techniques often use sperm and
eggs from a married couple, but the technology, of course, can use
any source of eggs and sperm.

On July 25, 1978, in Great Britain, Louise Joy Brown was the first
child born of IVF techniques. Her sister Natalie was born through IVF
in 1981. Today, IVF procreation is widely accepted throughout the
world as a medica] intervention to address problems of infertility.
Many IVF children are born each day. Estimates are that at least 45,000
IVF children have been born in the United States in the past two
decades. On Louise Brown’s twentieth birthday in 1998, the BBC
News reported that IVF had led to about 200,000 babies being born
during the first twenty years of the use of this technique.'”

Cloning marks a significantly different approach to a child’s ori-
gin. In cloning the set of genetic instructions that directs the em-
bryo’s physical development derives not from the combination of
genes from two parents but from a set of genetic instructions iden-
tical to that of the single “parent” from which the clone is gener-
ated. The word “clone” comes from the Greek KAgv (klén), meaning
sprout or twig. Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (Tenth
Edition) defines a clone as “an individual grown from a single so-
matic cell of its parent and genetically identical to it.” (““Somatic”
means a bodily cell that has a complete set of paired genes, rather
than a sex cell that has only half of the set of paired genes.) The use
of the word “clone” as a noun in the English language dates from
the beginning of the twentieth century. The word became a verb in
the middle of the twentieth century.

Cloning is not a new feature in the world of biology. In the plant
and insect world there are many examples of reproduction occur-
ring by an identical offshoot coming from the parent stock.

Indeed, our own human development from embryo to adult hu-
man involves the cloning of the original single cell produced at our
conception. All the cells currently in our body are clones of that
original cell.

The phenomenon of identical twins is also an example related
to cloning. Identical twins occur when, very soon after conception,
the embryo splits into two distinct entities. Both entities have iden-
tical sets of genetic instructions, but each grows independently. In
the earliest stages of embryonic development all the genes in the in-
struction set are equally at work or dormant in each cell alike, so
that when the embryo splits, full development of both new entities

is possible. Not long into the development, however, cells in the
embryo begin to differentiate. Some begin to form heart muscle,
others form other organs, and so forth. Once the cells begin to dif-
ferentiate, the possibility of natural identical twinning is past.

Genetic science is now pursuing the possibility of taking a dif-
ferentiated cell from an adult human, returning it to a state where it
can direct the entire development of an embryo, introducing it into
an egg that has been emptied of its own genetic instructions, and
then inducing the cell to use the nutrients in the egg cell to begin to
develop into a new individual. Very few people advocate cloning
to bring about a new live-born human. In a previous report, the
Commission addressed the prospect of cloning to produce a new
live-born human.'* Many people, however, currently advocate us-
ing cloning to produce pre-implantation human life from which
stem cells might be retrieved for biomedical research and for pos-
sible therapeutic interventions. This is sometimes called “thera-
peutic cloning” in contrast to “reproductive cloning,” but a more
descriptive phrase is “cloning for biomedical research.” The re-
trieval of stem cells ends the development of the embryo; the em-
bryo is prevented from developing into a live-born human.'?

We now review key points concerning in vitro fertilization and
proposals to retrieve stem cells from pre-implantation human life.

99 66

1. This report uses the terms “fertilized egg,” “pre-implantation hu-
man life,” and “embryo” to point to the earliest stages of the be-
ginnings of anew human life. In the past forty years science has
opened fascinating windows on these stages.

2. Many lines of thought concerning pre-implantation human life
use the term “human life” while leaving open questions con-
cerning the moral significance of human life seen in the earliest
stages of the beginnings of a new human life.

3. In vitro fertilization differs from natural procreation by initiat-
ing the cycle of human life in a laboratory Petri dish outside a
woman’s reproductive system.

4. Pre-implantation human life is often lost in the natural process
of procreation, even though the cycle of human life has been ini-
tiated entirely within a woman’s reproductive system. Physician
Carolyn B. Coulam reports that “the magnitude of [naturally oc-
curring] fetal wastage in humans is considerable, approaching a
loss of up to three quarters of fertilized ova.”°

5. Pre-implantation human life is also often lost in IVF practices.
In the best of circumstances only about one third of embryos
transferred to the woman’s reproductive system lead to a suc-
cessful beginning of a pregnancy, let alone to a live birth.”! Pre-
implantation human life is also Jost through decisions not to
transfer fertilized eggs.

6. A decision not to transfer a fertilized egg leads to further deci-
sions about whether to discard the unused embryos, to freeze
them for future attempts at pregnancy, or to use them for research
and as sources for stem cells. The embryos that are not trans-
ferred are either left to expire and be discarded, or (if they are
thought to be viable) they can be preserved by being frozen for
possible future use. Some of those that are frozen are later
thawed and transferred, but others are eventually discarded or
remain frozen with little or no prospect for future transfer. Esti-
mates for 1999 were that 75,000 IVF children would be born
(twice the number of children available for adoption) and 19,000
embryos would be frozen. In the same year, a conservative esti-
mate of the total number of embryos currently frozen was
188,000.77 An estimate in September 2002 was that “over
200,000 embryos are left over from in vitro fertilization (IVF)
attempts to help couples have children. The unused embryos are
frozen in labs all over the United States, waiting for a decision
about what will be done with them.””? In 2004 the estimate had
jumped to 400,000 frozen embryos in the United States alone.”

2007 Convention Workbook