Comment by xenadu02
7 years ago
Let’s say you lost your testicles due to cancer, but there’s a new procedure that can grow new ones from your stem cells. It’s experimental and will cost $150,000. Before having your cancerous testes removed you stored sperm.
Are you really surprised that some men who want to be fathers would choose to have the procedure rather than using their own previously stored sperm?
Yes I'm surprised. I'd want my testicles back for other reasons maybe, but if I had stored sperm I don't see why to have an expensive operation.
Yes. In fact, much more surprised than in this case - I can at least see why would you want to have your baby grow inside you. Doing experimental surgery just so you can have fresh sperm seems absurd to me.
Shit, I'd just want my balls back so I didn't have to take shots every few weeks.
And they'd be brand new, with none of the reduced output that comes from aging.
That's pretty much the worst example you could have come up with. Carrying a child inside of you, is no stretch of the imagination equivalent to impregnating someone the old fashioned way. No man in their right mind would put up $150,000 in experimental money, when they have their own stored semen. Sure, if none exists maybe, but doing all that just so you can use fresh? That's just silly. It's still your DNA, and you can still have sex.
I'd probably be very wary at that point of going into the hospital any more than I have to, especially for experimental treatments. I'm surprised everyone is so sanguine about things like that; you're enduring invasive surgery, and experimental methods that could easily fail and cause serious side effects. I'd only take it if the situation was dire and there was no other option.
Using it for non life-threatening issues would be putting a lot of stress and risk on myself and my body for little reason.
Well, yes I'm shocked that someone would go to great expense, risk their life, and use scarce research resources in a completely unnatural effort to do something "naturally"... but I shouldn't be.
Because rule 34... someone will get off on it.
It's not about "someone getting off on it". Having a "natural" pregnancy leads to way less issues:
Surrogate mothers have to have artificial insemination/IVF. So would the hypothetical mother in this case. These eggs don't all stick to the uterus, so the procedure normally involves sticking 3-4 fertilized eggs inside the embryo.
So if you want one kid, you need to plan to have up to 4. That's a concern.
Then there's the chance of having a chimera, where the baby uptakes the surrogate's DNA. This can cause complications (I know with a transplant this is still the case). There's also the whole "mother not carrying the baby" thing.
This isn't as crazy as it sounds.
This was about testicles not pregnancy, if you look up post.
Ignoring that (and "not as crazy as it seems" is a pretty straw argument), I'd say that the risks to mother and child of such an extreme surgery and long term use of anti-rejection drugs during child bearing raises it's own ethical issues. Adoption seems to be completely inconsidered.
That you want to argue that many people's insemination choices are driven primarily by logic seems odd to me. I think they get off on their idea of what sex, pregnancy, and childbirth are supposed to be like based on what they hear from their friends, family, and media, along with how they want to be perceived. Only a tiny portion of that is related to rational decisions to provide societal or even individual good to their child.
2 replies →
Implanting 3-4 3-day embryos is quite rare these days. Most doctors now do 5-day blastocysts, and insert only 1-2 (many insurance companies will only cover 1 at a time). The "4 babies at a time" concern is now very rare.
- Guy who has done IVF before