"Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons." - R. Buckminster Fuller

The good news is that I watched all of the final matches of the Ryder Cup live on TV. The bad news is that they started at 1:00 a.m. locally. Boy, am I tired!

You may have seen Steve's comment on last night's post about Steve May. After reading it I did some searching and learned more. Mr. May seems to have more political zeal than personal character. He recruited several homeless people to run as Green Party Candidates on the state's general election ballot, something that requires only one write-in vote on the primary ballot and the filing fee. The Democrats and Greens said it was just a stunt to drain votes away from the Democrats. They went to court to get the bogus candidates pulled from the ballot but it turns out the whole thing is legal according to current AZ law.
Steve May was running for office himself, to be the State Rep. from District 17. But he withdrew from the race three weeks ago when his Extreme DUI conviction came to light. His blood alcohol was .20, over twice the legal limit.
The Steve May and homeless candidate flap is just a small piece of the political shenanigans that go on here. This place could be Chicago for all the malfeasance and misfeasance that characterize AZ politics.

I fell over this morning on my bike ride. Didn't crash, just fell over. Couldn't get my cleat out of the pedal fast enough as I stopped for the red light at Happy Valley and Lake Pleasant Pkwy, and did an Arte Johnson. That's a horrible feeling as you realize you're past that mystical balance point and going to fall to the ground, with nothing at all you can do about it. And because that's the busiest intersection for miles around during the morning commute only about 50 people watched me.
(As soon as I was up I spent some time messing with the pedal as though it were a mechanical issue.)

The Nobel Prize for Medicine was announced today. It was given to Dr. Robert Edwards, the man who developed In Vitro Fertilization. The first IVF baby (AKA test tube baby) was born over 30 years ago, and Louise Brown now has children of her own.

Thousands of women who would not otherwise be able to conceive have had children because their eggs were withdrawn, fertilized by sperm outside the womb and then implanted in the uterus and carried to term. For them IVF must seem like the best of what medical science can provide. For the hundreds of thousands of children who have or will perish as a result of IVF the perspective is decidedly different.

Doctors administer a regimen of hormones to the hopeful mother that increase her egg production far beyond what's normal, and up to 30 eggs are harvested. These eggs are then fertilized outside the womb where they are allowed to develop for 3-5 days. When the optimum time comes a varying number of those fertilized eggs, or embryos, are implanted in the woman. In Canada and the UK only two can be implanted, but in the U.S. it can be as many as eight. Those embryos are selected from the total number available based on their relative health and chances for viability. A Canadian study reports that IVF results in a live birth 27% of the time.

What happens to the unused embryos? They are frozen for future use in the event the first implantation doesn't result in a live birth or the woman wants additional children. Embryos not used remain in storage indefinitely. This has raised some significant issues. Should they be used for stem cell research? If there's a divorce after a couple goes through IVF who gets custody of the remaining embryos? How is a custody dispute settled? Then there are matters like selecting embryos based on their sex or genetic characteristics. Should embryos that test positive for a particular genetic disease or defect be rejected? What if the tests only indicate an increased likelihood for that condition? As science advances these and other questions will force themselves on us.

I wonder how many of the Christian couples who opt for IVF and who categorically reject abortion as the killing of a child understand the same thing happens with IVF. Those fertilized eggs are each a child, unique and valued in God's sight. Whether the unused embryos - children passed over because they failed to meet certain biological criteria - remain frozen in perpetuity or are eventually destroyed is a distinction without a difference. They were sacrificed on the altar of a desire to experience childbirth.
I have EVERY sympathy for the couple unable to conceive naturally. But as cold as it may sound, it is the height of selfishness to sacrifice children, even if we use sterile terms like embryo to describe them, so that a couple can give birth. This evil seems the more egregious in light of the millions of children in this country and others who will grow up without loving parents to provide for their physical, emotional and spiritual needs.

Our science long ago outpaced our values and morals. This truncated discussion of IVF doesn't take up issues like single parenthood, gay parenthood and other deviations from God's plan made possible through IVF. And at the risk of offense I decided to take the opportunity of today's Nobel announcement to at least raise the moral side of this procedure. Each couple will make their own decision, but they should consider all that's involved, and all who are involved, not just their own aching to give birth.

Psst. Did you catch the blast at the top of this blog?