B2 – Upper Intermediate
A baby girl has been born from a human embryo that was frozen 24 years ago. It is the world’s longest-known frozen embryo that has been used to birth a child. According to doctors, frozen embryos can develop just as effectively as fresh ones.
Read this lesson about an embryo frozen for more than two decades and the birth of a baby girl from it.
Discussion Questions:
- What do you think about embryo cryopreservation?
- Is this technology popular in your country? Why do you think this is the case?
- What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of embryo freezing?
- Is this the future of human reproduction? What are your thoughts on this?
- Is this something that young people should consider doing at their prime? Why or why not?
2 replies on “Baby Girl Born from Frozen Embryo”
The cryopreservation of embryo is a part of the in vitro fecundation. It consists of freezing embryo until they are going to be used. However, this technic is provoking controversy among people who think that this is a progress for the science and those who consider it unethical one.
On one hand, the cryopreservation is a solution for women who want to have children, but due to different causes they cannot. Besides, this process increases the rate of pregnant and reduces the possibility of multiples pregnancies. Also, it can be selected the embryo to be transferred.
To have success in the fecundation, the number of embryos to be generated must be bigger than needed. And it is precisely in this point when the problem arises. What happens with the embryos which are not going to be used to prepare the fecundation? There are several options: to get destroyed, donate them to other person or to the Science, or get freeze them again.
For many people, an embryo is already considered a human being and, hence, use it for investigation, destroy it or donate it to other people is against their moral, because it is treated like a thing instead of a human being.
In Spain, in vitro fecundation, on the whole, is the first alternative for those women who can not have children before going to other solutions such as adoption.
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