Thursday, 28 March, 2024
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Ethics of silence

The [b]University of Utah[/b] is ‘testing the presumption that IVF clinics deliver babies who are the biological children of their clients’, reports [s]BioEdge[/s]. This follows a US family discovering that the biological father of their daughter was an alcoholic, convicted felon working at the university’s fertility clinic where the mother had artificial insemination, supposedly with her husband’s sperm, in 1991.

A university committee of inquiry concluded that although an apology was warranted, the most ethical policy was [i]not[/i] to notify other clients of the fertility clinic during the time when the employee was operating. ‘IVF must be the only industry in the world which can get away with excuses like that after catastrophic systemic failure,’ comments Michael Cook, editor of [s]BioEdge[/s].

[link url=http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/57860943-78/lippert-university-font-committee.html.csp]Full Salt Lake Tribune report[/link]
[link url=http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/10950]Full BioEdge report[/link]
[link url=http://www.scribd.com/doc/219979754/University-of-Utah-investigative-report-on-Thomas-Lippert]University of Utah Review Committee Report[/link]

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