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the Plight of Infertile Couples |
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Compiled by GayToday
Editor's Note: The following correspondence resulted when an infertile married heterosexual male suspected of impotence and laughed at in his “closely- knit Muslim society” for his inability to reproduce wrote to Randolfe Wicker, Director of the Human Cloning Foundation web site. www.humancloning.org
Wicker, who founded of the world's first pro-human cloning activist organization (Clone
Rights United Front, 1997) is also a pioneer of the gay and lesbian movement and was the
first openly gay male to appear on radio and TV programs in the early 1960s.
In late February, 1997, GayToday was the first publication to publish Wicker's pro-human cloning views. Among his most controversial statements was one that said: “Heterosexuality's historic monopoly on reproduction is now obsolete.” Human cloning, however, is still a taboo topic in gay and lesbian movement circles. The magazine, Alternative Family, devoted to the interests of gay men and women who have or who want children, has thus far provided no mention of cloning although Wicker maintains that it provides same-sex reproduction and should therefore be considered, along with artificial insemination and adoption, as a primary reproductive methodology. Since the “old fashioned” reproductive method allows for the mixing of recessive-defective genes from either partner, heterosexuals enter a reproductive genetic lottery each time they reproduce. Cloning, says, Wicker, provides us with reproduction minus haphazard genetic compromises. In the meantime, the founder of Clone Rights United Front is finding his foremost listening audience among sterile heterosexuals. Herewith is an intense and poignant exchange between an infertile male in India and the American gay pioneer who is now a cloning-advocacy pioneer: Dear & Respected Sir: Please help me. Treat this mail as an emergency S.O.S. Your timely and positive reply could save a life. I am highly distressed, depressed and almost on the brink of suicide.
We live in a society that unfortunately equates infertility with impotency. Though we continued enjoying sex we became the laughing stock of our closely-knit Muslim society. Those getting married after us were having children, but not us. In 1999 my wife died in a major car accident. I had a miraculous escape though I was badly injured and had to fight for life in the emergency ward for nearly 3 months. That was one year ago. I am now married again. My marriage is just one month old. But old memories are coming back and though we enjoy sex often the fear that I may not become a father is killing and haunting me and I feel really sorry for the new girl who is herself a divorcee and was really tortured by her first husband. Now what I want to ask you is I read about cloning and know that you are a strong votary for it. Do I start the other treatments like analyzing the reason for the lack of sperms in me and employ the other suggested ways for azoospermia or do I keep dreaming that one day cloning will be legally allowed in this world and there is still hope for men like me ? I personally feel there is nothing irreligious about cloning as we are using the same gene unlike artificial insemination that uses donor sperms. Correct me if I am wrong. Further the same God who has created this ailment named azoospermia in the first place has given his own human beings the brains to discover the science of cloning. Correct me again if I am wrong. I have some questions to ask you. Has any human ever been cloned so far ? Or is it DOLLY alone ? Will cloning ever be within the reach of the common man ? If so when ? Can I in India, with your help of course, start a big movement for the advancement of cloning ? Please answer my questions I beg you at the earliest as your kind words of solace can save a life, can save a family. By replying to me you shall be doing a service to God, to mankind. So for God's sake please please take time off your very busy schedule and reply. Name Withheld Reply from the Director of the Human Cloning Foundation Dear & Respected Friend:
One such organization is called the American Infertility Association. Another is called Resolve. I think you can access their web sites on the Internet. I am not a fertility expert. However, I do know that there are treatments called ICSI in which sperm that cannot penetrate an egg is injected directly into one. A writer researching this area described a procedure to me this afternoon in which they test sperm in a hamster, then operate on the hamster to see if the sperm was able to penetrate the protein covering on the egg. In that fashion they can determine if ICSI is necessary. Realistically, I think you should see what kind of treatments are available for azoospermia as your first option. Secondly, I think you should try to quietly find, or "start" a group like Resolve and/or the American Infertility Association. Obviously, you have suffered great personal anguish. You are living with a secret that is causing you much pain. Finding that you are not alone with your problem, discovering that there are thousands of others just like you, talking about which fertility doctors are the best, etc., will help keep depression away. It will give you a renewed sense of control over your own life. I know that people everywhere, especially men, are shy about talking about such personal matters. However, I suspect that the fact you feel so emotionally desperate is due in part to the fact that you really haven't had even a small number of people sharing your situation to talk with. Cloning will probably be an option for you within a few years. Right now, they have cloned a number of animals. If a proposed law is passed in England, they will commence something called "therapeutic cloning". This is exactly the same procedure as human cloning except that they take the embryo during the first fourteen days and turn it into a stem cell culture rather than implanting it into a woman's womb where it would grow, differentiate and finally emerge as a child. The fact that scientists are eagerly working on this kind of research definitely means that human cloning is not too far away. Once the technique is perfected, you will not only be able to have a child, you will able to have a son that would be the most amazing child imaginable. Your son would share your taste in music. He would like the same colors. Whatever talents you have, he would share. Your son would be the most special person in your life because he would be every father's dream--"his own blood"; "someone who understood how and why you felt and did things as you do", "a son who liked the same sports as you and who would prefer and excel at the same ones as you", "a son who would truly live up to the ideal of 'Like father. Like son' in the most unbelievably wondrous way". This son would be not just your child, he would also be your later born twin. If you find time, read some books on identical twins. There is a Twinstuff.com web site that has bulletin boards where twins post messages. Identical twins have the most beautiful closeness to each other in their lives. They have a "friend" who understands them like no one else. Indeed, I am of the opinion that once cloning becomes available and people see the special nature of the relationships between individuals and their later born twins, many more people than anyone currently imagines will seek cloning as a means of reproduction. Children conceived through cloning would not be unmanageable brats that left a parent wondering what they were thinking, what they were up to, and why. Children conceived through cloning would not abandon their parents upon marrying as they so often do today. They would not move thousands of miles away on a whim and just call or visit briefly or send cards on holidays. No, they would be too close to their older parent-twin to drift (run?) away like that. With cloning, parenting would finally reap the justly deserved benefits so infrequently gotten today. At least one parent would be especially loved and revered. That parent would never be forsaken or forgotten. That parent would not have to fear growing old with no child willing to give them care. You are especially fortunate to be a Muslim in this regard. Lori Andrews, in her book (misleadingly) entitled The Clone Age opens with a description of flying into Dubai to talk to a group of Muslim clerics about the "morality" of cloning. The book comes back to that setting at the very end. In between, she describes the history of her adventures in the field of reproductive medicine in the United States but ultimately she decides she is against human cloning (that's why the title is misleading-it really should have been entitled "My Adventures in Fertility & Reproductive Medicine"). In any event, the Muslim clerics ultimately decided that cloning would be fine if certain conditions were met: (1) that the person cloned was a man; (2) that he was married and (3) that he was in an infertile relationship. YOU MEET ALL THESE CONDITIONS! So, at least you will not have to deal with religious persecution as you pursue having the son every father dreams about. Dr. Raz Kuldeep, whose writings you can access through the www.humancloning.org web site is trying to raise money at this time to finance a clinic for cloning in India. I wish him well in his efforts. However, I think the lives of the first ten or twenty children conceived through cloning (and their originators) are going to be pretty terrible. They are going to be so famous and watched so closely that they are going to be robbed of their privacy and personhood. Perhaps you know the story of the Dionne Quintuplets, five little girls born to a Canadian couple back in the 1930s who were turned into a media attraction and hated every minute of it. It would be wonderful for you to champion human cloning in India. However, I think that it is best at this time to keep this issue off the "radar screen" there. There's that Hindu mythology about the personification of evil having to be slain so that "not one drop of his blood falls on fertile ground" because if it does 'another' (clone) monster rises in his place. However, I really think you would be doing yourself and others in your situation a great service by starting (quietly) a group like resolve or the American Infertility Association in India. Here in the USA, they have weekends where fertility specialists come and report on their latest treatments. However, you should be warned that fertility treatments are costly, usually don't work like they would have you believe that they do, and that many infertile people end up being victims of their own desire to have children. That is why cloning is so "controversial" among some fertility doctors. They know that with cloning, every human being is fertile and can have the child of their choice. Their "money machine" of exaggerated profitable (to them) promises will simply no longer exist. Neither will infertility. After cloning becomes available to all, no one will ever have to suffer as you have suffered. Every man and every woman can have that special loving child every parent dreams of. And this time, it won't be an "exaggerated promise", it will be a beautiful, blessed, fully-fulfilled one. Life is precious. Treasure the one you have. Seek to see it shared with a special son!
Cloningly yours, |
Randolfe Wicker 
© 1997-2000 BEI