Issue 3 In This Issue >>> Spring 2019 ̶ Gene-Edited Babies and the Runaway Train of IVF (by Father Pacholczyk) ̶ Our Mission in Action ̶ On the Nightstand ̶ Who’s Who in the IVF Facility ̶ Embryology 101: Morula ̶ Words to Watch News and information about the youngest human beings Brought to you by Sacred Heart Guardians and Shelter tiny sparks Where to Find Us >>> Like us on Facebook (@sacredheartguardians) From the Director Visit www.sacredheartguardians.org Email [email protected] Believing without seeing Call 612-578-0377 Mail 3432 Denmark Avenue #253, Like many of you, I recently saw Visible differences alone make it harder Eagan, MN 55123 Unplanned. I hope Abby’s experience to emotionally connect with a human continues to convert hearts and minds being 1 day into gestation compared to everywhere, most especially of those who someone 13 weeks along. The fact that work in the abortion industry. he or she is living in a petri dish rather than travelling down a fallopian tube Abby’s conversion was brought about by doesn’t help either. what she witnessed first-hand, with her own eyes. Conceptual knowledge and the Most people never see a living embryo pleas of her loved ones weren’t enough. with their own eyes, or find themselves in an sharingelevator withan aelevator canister ofwith a Itwas was only only when when she she saw saw a aliving living baby “onWhat an She cryopreservedcanister of people. cryopreserved As such, people. 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How differently would we react to Abby’s continue praying for the people living beingHow different aborted lywas might barely someone react if the Sacred Heart Guardians and Shelter (SHG) is a story if the person being aborted was in lab dishes and cryo-storage. I hope visible,person beingeven withaborted powerful was too lab young to yet 501(c)(3) charitable organization incorporated in barely visible, even with powerful lab the embryos who passed away can and equipment?look anything Or iflike it didn’t’a child? look W hat if its Minnesota. Our mission is to provide corporal and equipment? Or if it didn’t’ look like a will pray for us too. likedeath a tookchild? place And witho whatut if actualits bloodshed? spiritual care for the youngest, smallest members child? And what if its death took place deathWhat tookif it wereplace abortedwithout beforeactual arriving in of our human family. Our activities include embryo without actual bloodshed? What if she bloodshed?the womb? WhatAnd, ifwhat she ifwere the reason for a remains burial, education, and prayer. All activities were aborted before arriving in the Sincerely, abortedwomb?“pre-corporal before aborarrivingtion” in ( mythe word, not a are carried out in faithfulness to the teachings of Laura Elm womb? scientific term) was a poor lab grade? the Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church. Founder, Executive Director A chromosome abnormality? Gender? Please continue to pray for the people Gene-Edited Babies and the Runaway Train of IVF by Father Tad Pacholczyk. Making Sense of Bioethics. December 2018. In November 2018, a Chinese scientist The answer to these questions will, in moreover, experience double the rate of named He Jankui (known to his associates fact, be linked to whether we understand birth defects of regularly conceived as “JK”) claimed that he had successfully IVF to be ethical or not — JK is right to children. produced the world’s first gene-edited draw the parallel. If we conclude that IVF is Over the years, these kinds of concerns human babies using “gene surgery.” The something good and ethically acceptable, have been mostly glossed over or ignored twin girls, he said, were born somewhere in we end up granting the principle that it is — we’ve grown accustomed to frozen China with a modified gene that makes OK to engage in very harmful and orphanages, and to the high toll involved in them immune to infection from HIV, the damaging actions as long as we have a good the process of assuring that a few of our virus that causes AIDS. A special DNA end or purpose in mind. Although IVF embryonic children survive and splicing technique called CRISPR/ Cas 9 involves a litany of grave harms, like the successfully implant. We downplay the risk was used when they were embryos to make engendering of human beings in of birth defects. Our insensitivity and the edits. In a series of short videos posted laboratories and the freezing or destruction desires have trumped a clear sense of ethics. on YouTube, JK offers an explanation of, of embryos, if our intention is to help others As we face the daunting question of and justification for, what he did. He fulfill their desire to have a baby, it must be editing human embryos, we run up against reminds his viewers that when scientists OK. By this same logic, gene editing of our the same temptation. Editing our embryonic first began doing in vitro fertilization (IVF) children will also be considered acceptable children to be free of a particular disease in 1978, a number of ethical concerns were as long as our intentions are good and we’re requires numerous embryos to be raised, but those mostly subsided over time: trying to help others, even if we’re actually simultaneously created (or thawed out), “The media hyped panic about Louise causing serious harms along the way. treated as “products” and subjected to Brown’s birth as the first IVF baby. But for genetic “treatments,” with many of them forty years, regulations and morals have perishing during the experiment, in order developed together with IVF, ensuring only that a few of them might survive and develop without the disease. Editing our therapeutic applications to help more than 8 million children come into this world. Gene embryonic children may also involve risks surgery is another IVF advancement.” to them that we will only understand later when they grow up. Is it ever proper to In another video, he puts it this way: experiment on our own offspring? “Look back to the 1970s with Louise Moreover, gene editing in embryos Brown. The same fears and criticisms then introduces changes that will be passed into are repeated now. Yet, IVF unquestionably the human gene pool, establishing has benefited families. There will be no permanent and irrevocable changes to our Adding up the grave harms from IVF question about the morality of gene surgery own humanity. How does one adequately gives us a long list: IVF turns procreation in 20 to 30 years.” evaluate the risks of such changes? into “production.” It dehumanizes JK’s strong conclusion leads us to ask embryonic children, treating them as The fact remains that we’ve been willing whether the general sense of revulsion that objects to be frozen, manipulated, to tolerate an abundance of human carnage up to this point with IVF, and one of the hasEmbryology arisen towards 101his gene>>>-editing work is abandoned or destroyed. Since the practice merely alarmist and shortsighted. Are began in 1978, millions of embryos have great tragedies of our age has been our tone peopleScience failing consistently to grasp demonstratesthe importance when and become warehoused in liquid nitrogen, deafness to the evils of IVF. JK argues that proprietythe life of awhat new he human is doing? being Is begins:he a at abandoned in frozen “orphanages.” Millions we are similarly poised to accept the the onset of fertilization (i.e., when the pioneer ushering in a new age of more have been outright discarded as production of gene-edited babies as yet membranes of the egg and sperm fuse). another variation on the theme. Will his enlightenmentThe “moment where of conception” mankind will is the be able biomedical waste. Instead of “loving our brazen instrumentalization of human beings to secondmake use it takes of the for powers this fusion of science to occur, to children into being” through the one-flesh achieveand when good the ends? new Ororganism should inhis its gene union of husband and wife, IVF mass- call forth gasps of disbelief, serious editingunicellular work beform condemned – the zygote and – JK is created.branded produces children in clinics, assembly-line reflection and action, or only a few more as a rogue scientist violating significant style, under the impetus of market passing yawns? moral boundaries? capitalism. Children born by IVF, moreover, experience double the rate of Reprintedquestions with will, permission. in fact, be linkedRev. Tadeusz to Pacholczyk, Ph.D. earned his doctorate in neuroscience from Yale and did post-doctoral work at birth defects of regularly conceived whetherHarvard. we He understand is a priest IVF of the to diocesebe ethical of orFall River, MA, and serves as the Director of Education at The National Catholic Bioethics children.