Within the next 10-20 years, a new and controversial fertility technology called in vitro gametogenesis could make it possible to manipulate skin cells into creating a human baby. However, this groundbreaking research has caused push-back from some critics, like Fr Tadeusz Pacholczyk, director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Centre, who says IVG would turn procreation into a transaction.
“IVG extends the faulty logic of IVF by introducing additional steps to the process of manipulating the origins of the human person, in order to satisfy the desires of customers and consumers,” Fr Pacholczyk told CNA in an email interview.
“The technology also offers the possibility of introducing further fractures into parenthood, distancing children from their parents by multiplying the number of those involved in generating the child, so that 3-parent embryos, or even more parents, may become involved,” he continued.
However, Fr Pachol-czyk hopes that potential parents will come to realize that children should not products that can be ordered or purchased by consumers, and should rather be seen as a gift. “Turning commer-cial laboratories to crea-te children on our behalf is an unethical step in the direction of treating our offspring as objects to be planned and created in the pursuit of parental grati-fication, rather than gifts received from the Lord.”
