Full Description
Advances in assisted reproductive technology are producing a new world whose boundaries and implications have yet to be fully explored and understood. New advances are announced and hit the headlines with dizzying regularity, triggering the hopes and aspirations of some, and the fears of others. What is possible? What are the implications? What should be permissible? Who should decide?Medically assisted reproductive techniques were developed to treat sterility and infertility. However, in parallel this has created a demand for applications outside the fields for which these technologies were originally intended. This book explores the issues that surround medically assisted reproduction by addressing them from the perspective of four key areas: the mystery of procreation and the enigma of origin and where we come from; the question of difference and alterity in procreation (be it the breaking down of the notion that one comes from two in heterologous procreation to the aspirations for same-sex procreation, or the blurring of chronology and generations through cryoconservation); the place of destiny, including how to think about individual destinies in an age of increasingly accessible gene sequencing paired with a growing link between procreation and prediction; and an exploration of how clinicians and professionals can respond to the subjective experiences of those who resort to medically assisted reproduction, and the singularity of each person's response to the difficult and complex questions it raises.
Contents
Introduction -- Questions of Origin -- Introduction to Part I -- The gift of life -- The child explorer -- Why a child at all costs? -- Sexuality and procreation -- The father in procreation -- Being another -- New modes of origin -- Death in procreation -- Questions of Difference -- Introduction to Part II -- Donor insemination -- Same-sex procreation -- The child who comes from the cold -- A desire to clone -- Questions of Destiny -- Introduction to Part III -- A present-day oracle -- The tragedies of predictions -- The uncertainty of predictions -- The aspirations of pre-implantation diagnoses -- Procreation in the web of prediction -- Beyond Procreation -- Introduction to Part IV -- The mutations of the Symbolic -- Programmed not to be programmed -- The enclaves of the unexpected -- The fault line of origin -- Everything can always change
