The Baby Business and Public Policy
By Marcy Darnovsky,
Science Progress
| 05. 05. 2009
Regulation Can Ensure Well-being and Protect Reproductive Rights
The recent media storm over the in vitro fertilization-induced birth of octuplets has receded into the tabloids and entertainment pages. A second fertility industry scandal that emerged several weeks later-the announcement by a Los Angeles fertility clinic that it would soon offer a program to select embryos not just for sex but also for hair, eye and skin color-has also veered out of the headlines. But the outcry surrounding these events has revealed mounting disquiet about the multi-billion dollar baby business.
The fertility industry's professional societies offer a potential avenue for self-regulation of the field, but their existing recommendations are too often ignored. Other countries regulate assisted reproduction to protect the well-being of all participants, including the children whom it helps create and the families and society into which they are born. Drawing lessons from their successes could help temper the commercial pressures in the U.S. assisted reproduction sector, without in any way diminishing reproductive rights.
The importance of addressing these issues is readily evident. The octuplets story left a mark even on the English language. Google now reports one...
Related Articles
By Katie LaGrone, WPTV | 06.28.2024
Image by National Cancer Institute from Unsplash
TAMPA, Fla. — A Tampa jury recently found the now-defunct Lung Institute in Tampa guilty of engaging in “deceptive or unfair practices” while it offered customers “valueless” stem cell therapy to treat incurable...
By Gilma Avalos, NBC | 07.03.2024
Image by Josh Appel from Unsplash
The dream of becoming parents is turning into a nightmare for hundreds of people caught up in a surrogacy money scandal.
Some of the individuals are facing infertility or medical challenges, seeing surrogacy as...
By Michael Hiltzik, LA Times | 07.02.2024
Photo by Claire Anderson on Unsplash
Second only to the Supreme Court’s ruling Monday on when presidents are immune from criminal prosecution, the biggest case of the court’s recently completed session involved the age-old conflict between judges and government regulators...
By Sonia Suter and Naomi Cahn, PET | 07.01.2024
Image by Dusdn5959 from Wikimedia Commons
Since the US Supreme Court's 2022 decision to overturn Roe v Wade (see BioNews 1147), there have been worries about the future of IVF in the USA. Both abortion and IVF involve decisions...