Annette stole our embryos

December 30th, 2008 at 9:05 am by David Farrar

Inaugural Health & DIsability Commissioner Robyn Stent writes in the Herald that then Health Minister Annette King changed the law in 2004 to allow the storage of body parts or bodily substances without the consent of the patient they came from, if it is for the purpose of approved research.

I’m all in favour of embryo research, but only if the parents give consent. It is shameful that Annette King nationalised their embryos to allow embryos to be stored without parental consent.

Tags: Annette King, embryos, Health, Research, Robyn Stent

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 30th, 2008 at 9:05 am and is filed under NZ Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

5 Responses to “Annette stole our embryos”

kiwipolemicist (393) Says:
December 30th, 2008 at 11:16 am
The article by Robyn Stent is seriously flawed in that a baby in utero is not a “body part”: how can the baby be a part of the woman’s body when it has different DNA?

http://kiwipolemicist.wordpress.com/2008/12/30/the-state-can-steal-parts-of-your-body-heres-how-to-make-a-protest/

http://christianclassicalliberalist.wordpress.com/2008/11/14/abortion-is-an-unwanted-baby-a-trespasser/

[DPF: The genetic material came from the parents. They should decide what happens to it, not the state]
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MacDoctor (66) Says:
December 30th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
DPF: I’m all in favour of embryo research, but only if the parents give consent

David, the whole issue here is that the parents cannot be contacted. In the face of this, I think using these embryos for research is a reasonable thing to do.

Stent’s reasoning here is utterly fallacious, as I have pointed out on my blog (apologies for link-whoring).

[DPF: I think they should be destroyed without parental consent. The "parents" gave them for one purpose - IVF, and they should not have remained stored without consent]
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LabourDoesntWork (240) Says:
December 30th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
In Right To Kill Lala-land it’s a body part if it’s not wanted; if it’s wanted, then it’s a child.
Btw an embryo is not genetic material from the parents; it’s a new life. Otherwise it wouldn’t be any more use for this type of experimentation than sperm and eggs would be.
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Lee (627) Says:
December 30th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
“[DPF: The genetic material came from the parents. They should decide what happens to it, not the state]”

That would be true of a two year old as well. So child murder would be acceptable to you based on your argument, so long as the parents or mother did the killing.
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kiwipolemicist (393) Says:
December 30th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
[DPF: The genetic material came from the parents. They should decide what happens to it, not the state]

I still say that Stent’s article is flawed, because the baby gets half of its DNA from the mother and half from the father: it’s not a part of the mother’s body. The convention is that an organism with its own DNA code is a unique life form. If not then a bunch of criminals will be wanting early releases.

[DPF: I think they should be destroyed without parental consent. The "parents" gave them for one purpose - IVF, and they should not have remained stored without consent]

Therein is the problem with IVF: what’s to be done with all those unwanted babies?

According to DPF it’s not ok to freeze a baby without consent but it is ok to kill one without consent. Nothing personal, but that’s what happens with moral relativism.
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