Infertility, transplants, genetic maedicine and religon

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Qa)

i) Describe the Treatments Available To Help Infertile Couples To Have Children.

Infertility is a huge problem in the Western world now; approximately 12.5 per cent of all couples in the UK have fertility problems. Women can take drugs to help them to be fertile. These drugs are not very successful, so most people use fertility treatments, which involve medical technology.

There are many ways of artificial insemination such as, in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) — this is a treatment for a woman who cannot become pregnant with her partner naturally in which an egg is fertilised outside her body and the resulting embryo is mechanically inserted into her womb to develop into a baby. Artificial insemination by husband (AIH) includes the husband’s sperm inserted into his wife mechanically. Artificial insemination by donor (AID) — AID is when donor sperm is used to fertilise a woman who has an infertile partner or the woman chooses to conceive without having sex with the donor. Egg donation is when the process of fertilising donated eggs with a male partner's sperm using IVF and inserting the embryo to the female partner's womb. Embryo donation involves donated egg and sperm to be fertilised using IVF and then inserted into the wife’s womb mechanically. Surrogacy means when both the egg of the wife and the sperm of the husband are fertilised using IVF with and then inserted into a donor womb. Surrogacy can also mean when the husbands sperm is fertilised with another woman’s egg, then after the birth, the child is given to the husband and wife.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) are an independent organisation who regulates the safe and suitable treatment for fertilisation. They give licences and monitor the quality of health centres that carry out infertility treatments. The HFEA give out information on infertility for all types of people interested in embryo technology such as patients, professionals and the government.

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Embryo technology has been very successful in producing children; five thousand children are born through infertility treatment every year. Infertility treatment gives infertile couples a new way to have children, they do not have to adopt someone else’s’ child, they can have their own.


ii) Explain Christian Attitudes, And the Attitudes Of One Other Religion, To These Treatments.

Different religions differ in opinions on infertility treatment some parts of different religion may have a different opinion on embryo technologies.

In Christianity, there is a difference in attitudes towards infertility treatment because the Roman Catholic Church ...

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