Eggs for Sale

EGGS FOR SALE! No, not the hen variety—human eggs! Just when you think you’ve heard it all, something else—even more bizarre—pops up. This time it has to do with the auction of human eggs on the internet.

According to news reports last week (around which some suspicion has now arisen), a fashion photographer who lives in Malibu, California is attempting to implement an utterly repulsive idea. He plans to assemble a bevy of beauties, i.e., fashion models, who will offer their “eggs” for sale to the highest bidder. He claims to have received the first serious bid already—forty-two thousand dollars. Supposedly, the bids will start at fifteen thousand dollars and could go as high as one hundred fifty thousand dollars.

The man’s rationale is very simple. He says he’s merely helping nature’s evolutionary process. In an editorial on his web site, he writes:

This is Darwin’s “Natural Selection” at its very best. The highest bidder gets youth and beauty. “Natural Selection” is choosing genes that are healthy and beautiful. This “Celebrity Culture” that we have created does better economically than any other civilization in history. We are turned on by beauty. Why?

We know our genetic code dates back to purple photosynthetic, sulfur producing bacteria, then on to Chimpanzees and us. We are evolving upward. The world economies are booming and there is just enough instability to create growth.

And so, to effect a better, i.e., more beautiful, breeding pool, the photographer has supposedly launched his new business, because he believes: “Beauty is evolution. Our obsession with beauty is the reason we are evolving.”

We’ll leave it to evolutionists like Stephen J. Gould and George Johnson (see Answering God’s Critic) to assess this most recent explanation for the alleged “evolutionary” agenda!

It’s sufficient to say that this procedure is strikingly similar to that attempted by Adolf Hitler during the dark days preceding World War II, when der fuhrer attempted, by breeding experiments, to develop his own “super-race.” Actually, such ambitious projects are but the logical extension of evolutionary thinking.

Whatever the specific details of this story may be, this business of selling eggs and sperm has been around for years, and it raises some serious ethical questions.

I want to make a couple of comments regarding this moral fiasco:

(1) Some scientists, particularly those associated with infertility clinics, have expressed disgust at enterprises such as the one to which we referred. Sean Tipton, spokesperson for the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, stated: “It’s unethical and it’s distasteful.”

Upon what basis does Tipton make his judgment that this practice is “unethical”? How do you determine what is ethical and what is not? I suspect the gentleman hasn’t a clue.

When you reject the authority of the Holy Scriptures as the standard for measuring right and wrong, you have nowhere to turn—except to the subjectivism of your own mind.

(2) Where are these “moralists” in terms of the wholesale destruction of human lives via the bloody practice of abortion? I seriously doubt that Mr. Tipton is morally outraged by the infanticide that has been common in this country since the 1973 Roe v. Wade supreme court decision. They are selective moralists!

(3) Finally, though, why is this practice of selling human eggs for reproductive purposes so appalling—and morally wrong?

The men and women involved with this procedure fail to recognize (or ignore the fact) that human reproduction is not a biological end within itself. This phenomenon is but a fractional part of a life-time process that has been designed by the Creator to be spiritual in essence ultimately. The Bible describes human reproduction as a gift from God (Genesis 4:1; 33:5; Psalm 113:9; 127:3), with the final goal of preparing one’s offspring for heaven (Deuteronomy 6:6-9; Proverbs 22:6; Ephesians 6:4; 2 Corinthians 12:14-15).

It’s wrong for a person to surrender his reproductive responsibility to others. When human beings bring a new life into this world (or contribute to that process), both he and she sustain an obligation to that child that cannot be forfeited.

Profane “Esaus” are selling the birthrights of their children. What a travesty!