I can’t comment on the artificial insemination rates **Manda Jo **mentions, but the IVF ones are normally a lot higher than she quotes. For example, here are the single blast pregnancy rates for my IVF clinic - almost 45% for 25-29, down to 20% between 40-44.
As noted by Guinastasia, if QEII is not the biological daughter of George VI, then this woman is no relation to her whatsoever. It would be a remarkable piece of good fortune to happen to use a donor whose offspring so closely resembled her faux-paternal grandmother.
Actually, it could be coincidence, or a result of royal families inbreeding, since QE2 also very closely resembles her mother. (And me, actually).
Not that this makes the artificial insemination crap and less ridiculous.
It does slightly.
There is a difference between being inseminated whilst aneasthetised when you had no such expectation (i.e. having dental work done etc) and being inseminated with the sperm of a man different to the one which you were expecting.
I’m not saying it’s all peachy and there is no moral element, but it is certainly different.
Yes. And the husband is aware, so at least only one person’s being fooled, not two, and the husband was willing to support the baby. But like you say, that doesn’t mean it’s all peachy.
Perhaps I should’ve put a smiley there!
But crass witticisms aside, the ethical issue is subtly different; being deceived by a rogue doctor is surely different from being deceived as the result of a collusion between one’s doctor and one’s husband.
In one sense the distinction is indeed a moot one. But to be betrayed from within the family in addition to the revelation of the child’s true paternity…?
Regarding DNA tests:
There was an article about the paternity laws, NYTimes IIRC, which mentioned that many states have laws, predating DNA testing, that put a limit (usually 2 years) on challenges to paternity. If the alleged father does not contest the claim within that time, then they cannot contest it later. The logic was to stop someone from continually bringing up challenges, or using an old doubt as a weapon many years later in a dispute.
The complaint was that some states (California being the example) made questionable efforts to notify fathers, then considered their failure to challenge as closing the case at the 2 year mark. One fellow claimed he had never received the court papers; they weresent to an old address. Another, his current girlfriend threw the papers in the garbage and he never saw them. Regardless, years later they are on the hook for child support for children when DNA tets prove the mother was at best, incorrect. One fellow was nowhere near the mother for a year before the child was born. DNA tests did not get them off the hook. Careless service of court papers did not get them off. Once the matter was settled, the law said it was irrevocably settled.
Similarly, I suppose the UK has common law like Canada, where parental bonds are not something to be broken arbitrarily by a parent. The supreme court in Canada has ruled in the last few decades that if a parent establishes a relationship with a child, they cannot walk away even if the child is not biologically theirs, even if they did not know beforehand. And, of course, they are on the hook for child support.
But, IIRC, the overriding answer is the simplest and oldest - a child born to a marriage is legally considered the child of the two spouses.
That’s the rumor a Scottish former co-worker mentioned. He was unable to “perform” with his wife but was the real father of the princesses with the aid of simple technology.
His brother shared that certain incapacity, which Wallis was able to overcome with her wiles.
Again, just rumor. (Or would that be rumour?)
IVF success rates are much higher per attempt==some clinics boast rates as high as 70% for women under 35–but each attempt is MUCH more expensive and invasive. As far as IUI (interuterine insemination–the preferred term) goes, there are a fair number of “normally fertile” couples that use IUI–lesbians, and single women, obviously, but also couples where infertility is strictly male factor, as well.
This FAQhas a list of abstracts at the bottom
From The effect of patient and semen characteristics on live birth rates following intrauterine insemination: a retrospective study:
The study Does intrauterine insemination offer an advantage to cervical cap insemination in a donor insemination program? looked at cases where the problem was isolated to the male (and so healthy donor sperm was used) and found:
These numbers are even lower than what I quoted because they are evaluating non-medicated cycles (where extra ovulation was not stimulated)
Yeah, I meant something similar to what Gwilliam is saying. The woman was still being unknowingly impregnated, or at least being impregnated with sperm from someone other than who she thought it was from, so something outrageous is still happening. But I think the issue shifts somewhat from a doctor violating the woman’s rights to a husband doing that (with aid from a doctor).
That puts Dr Pancoast in a somewhat different light, given the prevailing systemic sexism of the day. Not that what he did was right, of course.
No, it probably was right, legally.
As she was going to be under anesthetic during this procedure, they would have had her sign a document giving medical power of attorney to some relative – almost certainly her husband, who is her next of kin and who was present. So he had the legal right to make medical decisions for her while she was unconscious, including the decision to artificially inseminate her with this sperm. So it was all done properly & legally.
Whether it was morally right of not is a different, debatable question.
And whether it was right for the husband not to have told her once she came out of the anesthetic – another moral question.
I honestly do not see any ethical difference between the violation with and without the husband’s knowledge. Please note I do not say consent; the husband had no moral standing to give consent.
The medical ethical standards of the time were not what they are now, to say the least. However, to apply current standards:
The procedure was not a life saving procedure performed in an emergency. The procedure was an experimental procedure to which only the subject can give informed concent, EXCEPT in the case of persons incapable of making an informed judgement. In that case, the person’s legal guardian, not next of kin, can give consent.
Morally, however, there is a difference, and that the husband was involved in the violation make the events even more morally repugnant.
At worst, only the wife was being violated, not the wife and husband.
I’d say that this might be an example of an occasion where we can say ‘it was different in those days.’ They didn’t know if it would work, or how it would work, or how much effect that insertion of sperm would have compared to all the er, insertions of sperm the husband had previously put in, or how genetics work, or all sorts of things. This stuff is all quite recent knowledge.
I’m not sure when it was known that sperm contribute roughly half of the DNA to any ensuing child, but I’m sure it was after 1884. I might stand corrected on that (without being a stickler on ‘deoxyribonucleic acid,’ since that was discovered much later). You’d need to read the original text to know if they were aware they were actually knowingly making the woman become pregnant with a child who was biologically not her husband’s.
They were also operating under a system where it would be BFD if the child were a bastard, so maybe it’d be better if even the mother didn’t know.
By “the husband was involved in the violation”, I meant that he was an agent not the object of the violation.
Women couldn’t vote.
Right. It was an experimental medical procedure without the subject’s knowledge, never mind consent.
It was a grotesque and appalling act that reflected the contemporaneous view of women as less than fully capable humans.
I really cannot believe that story doesn’t make everyone’s skin crawl.
Oh, I agree, I hadn’t really thought of it that way before you mentioned it in a previous post; it still means that at least the husband wasn’t tricked as well as the woman; that makes the husband’s actions possibly worse, but the doctor’s less bad.
I strongly dislike it, but my cursory knowledge of the science and society at the time leads me to believe that the dr’s actions weren’t as grotesque as they seem now. The fact that this story is still being passed down to use now shows that it does make most people give a little shudder, but it’s not quite as simple as that.
Don’t assume that the doctor and the husband knew what they were doing. Odds on, they didn’t.
I’m not a big fan of moral relativism, but we have to take into account that people often just didn’t know in ‘scientific’ sense (DNA, germ theory, etc) those things we take for granted now.
Ref the O.P. I heard that the Royals were actually members of a superhuman race that secretly run the world and are in posssession of arcane sciences that “We are not advanced enough to be told”.
Oh damn I’m giving away the plot of Kittys new farce, er book that is.
I won’t accept the “well, things were different then” arguments. Things were a lot different in 1862, too.
They knew what they were doing; they were experimenting on the woman. They did not have her consent. They were experimenting in Tuskeegee, too.
But I have to stop, this is just hijacking.
I don’t see how that statement is true. Contracts are not just a legal thing. If she gave him the right to have medical decisions made for her while she was under, then he definitely did have the moral standing to consent for her. But the fact that he chose to deceive her implies that he did not fulfill his duty–choosing something she wouldn’t have chosen.
I also think we did have the basic idea that whoever the sperm came from was the biological father. It’s the only thing that is different. And we made a big deal out of paternal heritage. Furthermore, we have a doctor that apparently understands the reproductive system enough to show that the husband was sterile, not the wife. How could he not know what was going on?
OK. I am starting to feel a little guilty about starting this Doctor Pancoast bit going without checking my facts first. Here is a link to what, as far as I can tell, is a copy of the original document that this discussion is based on: a 1909 letter to the editor of The Medical World by one of the medical students involved in the original procedure. http://familyscholars.org/2011/02/17/4579/
The facts seem to be these (at least according to the letter):
- Doctor Pancoast did not originally inform either the wife or the husband.
- When the husband was informed, after the wife was clearly pregnant, he was “delighted”.
- The wife was apparently never informed.
- The former medical student, at least, was still in 1909 under the impression that the father’s contribution to the make-up of the child was essentially nil. He believed, in modern terms, that the mother supplied all the genetic material of the child. In fact, he went so far as to claim that the child resembled the legal rather than the biological father.
- Oddly, though, he notes that the sperm was donated by the “best-looking” medical student present.
- The former medical student seemed to believe that Dr Pancoast, in doing this, was pioneering an important procedure because he believed that a father’s gonorrhea would have a deleterious effect on a child’s development. Gonorrhea being widespread at the time, artificial insemination was an excellent way to improve the overall health of the future generation.
It is not clear how many of his former student’s beliefs were shared by Doctor Pancoast.
I think I have to revise yet again my view of the ethics of what happened…