Tags: reproductive technology
Blog Posts (26)
Apr 20, 2012
Caplan: Time to Think about IVF Baby Health
Art Caplan reflects on study published in Fertility and Sterility which indicated that IVF babies have a 37% higher risk of being born with a birth defect compared to naturally conceived children.…
Apr 10, 2012
Octomom: "I Goofed."
According to LifeNews.com, Nadya Suleman admits that she made a mistake by undergoing an IVF procedure that resulted in the conception and birth of 8 children at once.…
Apr 09, 2012
Are "Anonymous Fathers" Really a Problem?
The Center for Bioethics and Culture continues its crusade against artificial reproduction; this time the target is sperm donation. Its recent film Anonymous Father’s Day argues that using a sperm donor to conceive causes serious emotional impact on children of sperm donors from not knowing anything about their biological fathers” It is described as a “secret” akin to a time bomb waiting to go off.…
Jun 28, 2010
July Arrives Early for AJOB!
The July issue of The American Journal of Bioethics arrives early with three fascinating articles–two about sex (one the biological kind, the other the active kind) and the other about transhumanism.…
May 17, 2010
Ethics of Reproductive Tourism Questioned
I was simply astonished to read the “ethical analysis” (if one could call it that) from DNAIndia.com in an article titled “New Age Moms Want Pregnancy Outsourced!”
Written from the Indian perspective, where everything from the UK and the US is outsourced to Indian laborers, I can understand the title, but the analysis is simply flawed every way.…
Aug 19, 2009
Perhaps Now You'd Prefer That Your Bioethics "Sound Bites" Come From Academics? Or Would You Prefer Octomom.
In truly unbelievable video from CNN.com today, “Octomom” Nadya Suleman weepily admits to only thinking of “the now” and “saving those 8 embryos when the made the decision to have her octuplets and confesses to realizing that she has “screwed up” her other two children.…
Jun 23, 2009
My Mommy Is My Daddy Is My Mommy
Stem cell research has the potential to change the standard gendered parental relationships by making it possible for women to produce sperm and eggs from stem cells say British researchers in the Globe and Mail.…
Jun 16, 2009
Cultural Sex Selection: No Harm, No Foul?
Emily Willingham asks an important question as to whether the apparent cultural preference toward having a male child in the family among Asian-Americans represents a harm–either to Asian-American girls, or simply to women generally.…
Mar 12, 2009
Want a "Perfect Baby"? You're Gonna Have To Make It The Old-Fashioned Way.
That’s right, Fertility Institutes in Los Angeles, who announced last month that they would be offering PGD for eye and hair color and other cosmetic traits, has now announced via their website that they are backing off of their plans, says Fox News.…
Mar 04, 2009
Art Caplan Video: "Designer Babies" Ethical?
Well, Art Caplan clearly disagrees with me on two very important things. Last week when I wrote about the Los Angeles fertility clinic that is offering PGD to prospective parents for eye color, hair color, as well as sex selection, I suggested that for traits such as these there is relatively little harm that can come to the future offspring.…
News (20)
May 14, 2012
So Eager for Grandchildren, They’re Paying the Egg-Freezing Clinic (New York Times)
Rachel Lehmann-Haupt, author of “In Her Own Sweet Time: Unexpected Adventures in Finding Love, Commitment and Motherhood,” described conversations about fertility between women and their parents as “the postmodern, adult birds-and-the-bees talk.” She added, “There is a very fine line between concern and pressure.”
Apr 30, 2012
Dark side of IVF makes an impact (BioEdge)
The negative side of IVF birth defects may finally be getting some publicity. IVF clinics are aware that there is a higher incidence of birth defects among children conceived through IVF. However, consumer awareness is low. But last week’s news that birth defects are 37% higher is dramatic. “That is a huge number,” writes Art Caplan, of New York University. He is probably the most quoted bioethicist in the US, and possibly the world, so attitudes could change.
Apr 30, 2012
Will Gattaca Come True? (Slate)
The potential benefits of NIPD are many: elimination of the risks associated with amniocentesis, the replacement of aggravating probabilities with accurate information, and more time for expectant parents to make difficult decisions. But because insurance providers have an incentive to cover them, fetal DNA tests stand to be introduced before we have time to consider the slew of ethical and political challenges they will introduce.
Apr 26, 2012
Pregnant woman who bought U.S. donor egg speaks out (CBC News)
A royal commission, several parliamentary committees, an act of Parliament and a federal agency have all debated reproductive technologies, touching on a quagmire of legal, social and ethical issues that include the exploitation of surrogates and the sale of sperm and eggs before the advent of cryopreservation. Prof. Françoise Baylis, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Bioethics and Philosophy at Dalhousie University in Halifax, advised the royal commission and later sat on the board of Assisted Human Reproduction Canada before she quit in frustration in 2010 over concerns about its management.
Apr 26, 2012
Teacher says Catholic school fired her over IVF (Bloomberg Businessweek)
An Indiana teacher who says she was fired from a Roman Catholic school for using in vitro fertilization to try to get pregnant is suing in a case that could set up a legal showdown over reproductive and religious rights. Emily Herx’s lawsuit accuses the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend and St. Vincent de Paul school in Fort Wayne of discrimination for her firing last June. Herx, 31, of Hoagland, Ind., says that the church pastor told her she was a “grave, immoral sinner” and that a scandal would erupt if anyone learned she had undergone in vitro fertilization, or IVF.
Apr 23, 2012
Assisted human reproduction and the law (CBC News)
An air of confusion surrounds Canada’s rules governing fertility issues, such as assisted human reproduction. Although the federal government passed a law in 2004 that tackled a wide swath of the socially and ethically controversial issues surrounding reproduction, covering everything from human cloning to payment for sperm, the law hasn’t lived up to expectations.
Apr 17, 2012
Nuffield Council on Bioethics Call for Evidence: Disclosure and Donor Conception (BioNews)
The Nuffield Council on Bioethics has launched an inquiry (1) on the ethics of disclosure in families with children conceived using donated reproductive tissue (i.e. eggs, sperm, or embryos). In spring 2013 the Council will publish a report on its findings, making policy recommendations where appropriate. This call for evidence is part of a long history of debate on the topic of disclosure in the UK and runs parallel to international debates in the USA, Canada (reported in BioNews 645), Australia (reported in BioNews 651), and Europe.
Apr 16, 2012
IVF can't beat biological clock, warns Yale fertility expert (BioNews)
A leading fertility expert in the USA has warned of young women’s serious misconceptions about their own fertility. Writing in the journal Fertility and Sterility, Professor Pasquale Patrizio, from Yale School of Medicine and director of the Yale Fertility Centre, says that clinicians should ‘begin educating women more aggressively’ – but goes further. He argues that young women who choose to delay motherhood for whatever reason should be offered the opportunity to have their eggs frozen as an act of preventive medicine.
Apr 13, 2012
Surrogacy Experts Help Navigate Murky Legal Waters (NPR)
There are a growing number of lawyers making a living by coordinating surrogacies — a pregnancy where a woman bears a child for someone else who can’t conceive or carry a pregnancy to term.
Apr 09, 2012
Scientists rewrite rules of human reproduction (The Independent)
The first human egg cells that have been grown entirely in the laboratory from stem cells could be fertilised later this year in a development that will revolutionise fertility treatment and might even lead to a reversal of the menopause in older women. Scientists are about to request a licence from the UK fertility watchdog to fertilise the eggs as part of a series of tests to generate an unlimited supply of human eggs, a breakthrough that could help infertile women to have babies as well as making women as fertile in later life as men.