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Embryo Tissue Typing Just Another Form of Eugenics
PLW Letterhead

Wednesday, May 05, 2004


Contact: Peggy Hamill, State Director
Matt Sande, Director of Legislative Affairs
(262) 796-1111, (414) 416-0489 or info@prolifewisconsin.org


Embryo Tissue Typing Just Another Form of Eugenics

Today’s Journal of the American Medical Association reports on the birth of five infants conceived through in-vitro fertilization specifically for the purpose of “donating” their umbilical cord stem cells to their sick siblings. Chicago’s Reproductive Genetics Institute performed preimplantation tissue typing on 199 fertilized IVF embryos from nine couples whose previous children suffer from leukemia and anemia. Researchers selected 45 embryos with the matching tissue type, 28 of which were implanted in the nine women. In response, Pro-Life Wisconsin Vice President Michael John Phillips, M.D. issued the following statement:


The so-called “designer children” experiments reported in the latest JAMA degrade the essence of humanity. The concept distills and demeans the value of a human being to nothing more than a compatible tissue match. If the embryo is a match, it can be implanted in the mother’s uterus and may grow into a source of compatible transplant material for a sick sibling. If not a match, it’s discarded or destroyed by using it in other “research.” We cannot allow the value of a person to depend upon whether that person can be used by another.











Pro-Life Wisconsin (PLW) is a Christian educational and legislative organization representing more than 15,000 families across the state. PLW exists for a single purpose: to restore and protect the personhood and inalienable right to life of all the citizens of our state from fertilization until natural death.