Repro Tech

This Week in Bioethics #110

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1. Update on New Jersey and New York As I write, we’re waiting to hear whether New Jersey Governor Murphy is going to sign the surrogacy-enabling legislation on his desk. Meanwhile, hearings are scheduled in New York for later this month on a bill seeking to legalize surrogacy in the Empire State. We are keeping […]

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Study Finds Surrogate Pregnancies are Different

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You know how a good song brings back old memories? Well, recently I found myself reading a research article published in Fertility and Sterility—or Fert and Stert, as I lovingly call it—and it brought back old memories of days when I was a young research assistant still trying to find my place in the world. […]

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This Week in Bioethics #103

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1. Pregnancy Outcomes for Surrogate Pregnancies are Significantly Different A recent journal article highlights a number of crucial differences between surrogate pregnancies and non-surrogate pregnancies.  2. Storage Issues at Fertility Clinics Two fertility clinics suffered failures in their frozen storage tanks last week. Reports by NBC, the Washington Post, and People magazine.   3. Romanticizing Double […]

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This Week in Bioethics #102

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1. Welcome to GATTACA The United Arab Emirates’ Khaleej Times reports on the near future of reproductive technologies. Genetic engineering of the embryo could mean that people will soon be able to produce ‘super babies.’ “People can start modifying embryos, for example, activating certain genes and replacing others or like removing all defective genes that […]

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This Week in Bioethics #100

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To celebrate the 100th This Week in Bioethics (TWIB), Jennifer and I did a 10 minute Facebook live version of TWIB! 1. How Many? How many? This was Jennifer’s simple question in her testimony before the Washington State House Judiciary Committee yesterday morning. How many women . . . how many children . . . […]

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Consuming Fertility

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The Washington Post recently ran an article outlining a whole range of ways in which the business of fertility is reaching new heights of consumerism as consumers go about consuming more and more fertility products and services. Would-be parents seeking donor eggs and sperm can pick and choose from long checklists of physical and intellectual […]

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An Absurd Fate: What Happens to Abandoned Embryos?

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I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: it almost always starts with an emotional story. The latest situation is an embryo custody battle in Arizona. It highlights the depth of real human emotions connected to having children and building a family, and the ways in which human lives are affected by a justice […]

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What is Brave New World Really About?

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I’m a huge science fiction fan, and I particularly like works of speculative and dystopian fiction. Some of my favorite, relatively recent books include Oryx and Crake, Snow Crash, and Anathem. Perhaps the most significant dystopian work, however, is Aldous Huxley’s 1932 Brave New World. Indeed, we here at the CBC sometimes use the phrase “Brave […]

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Public Policy and the Health of Young Mothers

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On September 13, CBC Founder and President Jennifer Lahl testified by phone before the Minnesota Legislative Committee on Surrogacy. The committee is holding a series of meetings on the issue this summer, and this meeting focused on the medical and psychological risks of surrogacy to women and children. CBC Executive Director Matthew Eppinette testified before the […]

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This Week in Bioethics

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1. When is it Too Old to Have a Baby? Another post-menopausal woman (age 62), along with her 78 year old partner, has just given birth, making her Australia’s oldest mother, thanks to IVF. The Australian Medical Association has denounced this birth as “selfish and wrong” with no consideration for the child’s best interest. This […]

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This Week in Bioethics

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1. This Needs to be Read and Shared as Widely as Possible California oncologist and hematologist Dr. Philip Dreisbach writes in the Wall Street Journal as clearly and urgently as I have seen about the perils of physician assisted suicide. He begins by highlighting some of the problems specific to California’s recently enacted assisted suicide […]

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Baby Markets: Financial Market Expert Weighs In

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I recently interviewed David Bahnsen, a highly regarded, California-based investment manager and expert in financial markets about his views on markets and children. Jennifer Lahl: I live in the back yard of the Silicon Valley, where, stealing from my colleague Dr. Bill Hurlbut at Stanford, we like to say, “We have a front seat on the […]

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This Week in Bioethics

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1. Priorities at the VA The department of veterans affairs this week released the preliminary results of a new study on suicide among veterans. “In 2014, the latest year available, more than 7,400 veterans took their own lives, accounting for 18 percent of all suicides in America. Veterans make up less than 9 percent of […]

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How Much Further Down the Road of Artifice Should We Travel?

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The cover story in July 4 edition of Time magazine examines the gene editing technique known as CRISPR. The article is helpful for understanding the basics of the science of CRISPR, and it raises a number of the ethical issues involved—the unknowns of heritable genetic changes, the potential for weaponization, imperfections in the technique itself. […]

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This Week in Bioethics

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1.  Can You Imagine That Anonymous Sperm and Egg “Donation” are a Problem? CBS’s Sunday Morning program this week ran an item on “The Flourishing Business of Building Family Trees,” highlighting widespread interest in genealogy and the businesses that are helping people in their searches. The report is bookended by the moving story of 55 […]

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People, Real Flesh and Blood Persons

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Remarks by Brent Waters, D.Phil. at theThirteenth Annual Paul Ramsey Award DinnerApril 16, 2016 Thank you, Gil, for that kind introduction, and thank you Jennifer and the members of the selection committee. When I learned that I had been selected to receive the Paul Ramsey Award for Excellence in Bioethics, I was both gratified and […]

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This Week in Bioethics

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1. Euthanasia Expansion If you need any evidence that the arguments in support of euthanasia or assisted-suicide are specious, read this story. A young woman in the Netherlands chose euthanasia by lethal injection. What was her terminal illness? She didn’t have one. Did she have less than six months to live? There is no evidence […]

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Wounded Vets Don’t Need Taxpayer Funded IVF

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I’ll be in DC next week for a bunch of meetings, mostly speaking with people about a bill that provides $3.4 billion in additional care for vets. I am involved because the bill currently includes an amendment to provide IVF benefits to wounded vets. These sorts of policy battles always start out with a rough […]

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