Yahoo! News - Lab Creates Babies As Stem-Cell Donors
CHICAGO - In a growing practice that troubles some ethicists, a Chicago laboratory helped create five healthy babies so that they could serve as stem-cell donors for their ailing brothers and sisters.

The made-to-order infants, from different families, were screened and selected when they were still embryos to make sure they would be compatible donors. Their siblings suffered from leukemia or a rare and potentially lethal anemia.

This is the first time embryo tissue-typing has been done for common disorders like leukemia that are not inherited, and the results suggest that many more children than previously thought could benefit from the technology, said Dr. Anver Kuliev, a Chicago doctor who participated in the research.

The Chicago doctors said the healthy embryos that were not matches were frozen for potential future use. But some ethicists said such perfectly healthy embryos could end up being discarded.

"This was a search-and-destroy mission," said Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The chosen embryos "were allowed to be born so they could donate tissue to benefit someone else."

For some reason I'm a bit troubled by this also. I can't quite put my finger on why. On one hand, I'm happy for the families that have found a cure for the ailing child and I marvel at the technology that is being advanced. On the other, it's disturbing that we create the embryos as a commodity, and again it's a commodity for the rich only. Look for lots of confusing legislation on this one.