윤리적ㆍ불교적 입장에서 살펴 본 잉여냉동배아의 이용

A Study of Buddhist and Ethical View on Use of Freezing Extra-Embryo Cloning

&nbsp;&nbsp;The usefulness of embryo cloning has been proposed in that it can produce transplanting organ massively, solve some hard-to-cure diseases, and bring promising hopes to sterile spouses.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;But embryo cloning cannot always be beneficial to human beings as it necessarily presupposes great unpredictable probl ems in both technological and ethical aspects. Once permitted, it will eventually lead to human cloning.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;Before long, we will have real problem about us, such as the instrumentation of human beings, the invasion of human uniqueness and individuality, the destruction of parent-children relations and so forth. Also, we will face the possibility of using the embryos commercially and hurting human dignity.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;At present, lots of people are raising their voices against the permission of embryo cloning and the possibility of human cloning. In addition, there′s a heated controversy about the life of embryos, the beginning point of human life. However hard is opposition, however, scientists will continue to experiment embryo reproduction by triggering the basic human instinct to have eternal life.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;Further conjecture in this direction would take us away from our main theme, and for the present we will simply note that embryo loss poses no real problem to the Buddhist belief that individual life when it begins, begins at fertility. The phenomenon of embryo loss does not show that the embryos which are lost cannot be human individuals. The statistic quoted in that&nbsp;&nbsp;connection are simply irrelevant one way or the other to the question of when life beings.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;The practice of freezing embryos which often occurs in IVF programmes is also cause for concern. Only about half of the embryos which are frozen and thawed survive the process, and many of these become nonviable and are discarded. The prospect of an embryo surviving the process and remaining viable is very low, and a survival rate as 8 per cent has been quoted. There are, moreover, serious legal problem concerning the ownership of frozen embryos and there are also concerns about the psychological effects upon a child who may be born many years after either or both of its parents are dead. Couples contemplating resorting to this technique should ask themselves carefully about their reason for wishing to be parents and consider whether their efforts are genuinely altruistic or for the satisfaction of their own desires. A selfish desire would not, from a Buddhist perspective, be an appropriate ground for embarking on the venture.