Randi Epstein's "Get Me Out: Making Babies Throughout the Ages"

As I was driving past the Brazilian Embassy a few days back on Massachusetts Ave in DC, I turned on the radio and heard "So tell me about these do-it-yourself forceps". My interest was instantly piqued. It was Fresh Air on NPR, and Terry Gross was interviewing Randi Epstein about her new book called "Get Me Out: Making Babies Through the Ages". Though the interview was only about 15 minutes long, it gave a very exciting example of what the book would provide, a deep look at technology, politics and sociology behind the history of women conceiving and delivering babies, right up until today's discussion of designer babies. Randi's interview was fascinating and I'm looking forward to grabbing the book!

[Editor's note: And read together with our previous post about Why I Love Designer Babies, you get a really  interesting, fun, and thought-provoking read]

Bookclub Selection: Normal At Any Cost

The Women's Bioethics Project's July 2009 non-fiction bookclub selection is:

Normal at Any Cost: Tall Girls, Short Boys, and the Medical Industry's Quest to Manipulate Height by Susan Cohen and Christine Cosgrove. 

From the Library Journal:

Two science journalists examine the fascinating history of medical science's flawed attempts to manipulate height and the ethics involved. In the first section, set primarily in the 1950s and 1960s, they discuss middle-class families who were urged to try to reduce their daughters' height before it was too late for them to be "successful adults." The tall girls were given estrogens to send them prematurely into puberty and force their growth plates to close.  In the second half, the authors focus on the use of human-growth hormone to increase the height of naturally short children. Before synthetic-growth hormone was developed, there was a painstaking procedure for extracting it from cadaver pituitary glands. This defective process led to the spread of neurological diseases as horrible as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (the human version of mad cow). Interestingly, neither the growth hormone nor the estrogen resulted in systematically proven results. This startling look at medical ethics and history has implications for the future of "human improvement" therapies; recommended for large academic and public libraries.

Normal at Any Cost would also make a great text for introductory high school or college bioethics courses because it manages to tackle in an accessible and compelling manner a wide range of bioethical issues from the medicalization of social problems, the pharmaceutical industry’s influence on physician education, limits of informed consent, definition of therapeutic v. enhancement interventions, to the appropriate allocation of medical resources (social justice considerations).

Read it this summer.

Turn on the Bright Lights, Baby...

First, there were glowing cats.






Then, reports of glowing dogs.









Now, glowing marmosets;









The gene for express the green fluorescent protein in their skin was delivered to the first marmoset embryos via a modified virus, but the significant news here is that the genetically modified primates that can pass their modifications to their offspring; it is the first known case that an introduced gene has been successfully inherited by the next generation in primates. Why is that important? Because medical researchers have yearned for an animal model that is closer to the human anatomy; researchers may now be able to produce whole groups of marmosets that mimic humans with diseases like cystic fibrosis or Alzheimers'.

While this breakthrough is exciting, warning bells have sounded that this is one step closer to the creation of human designer babies. So, let me know pose this question: How comforting or discomforting would it be to see your baby glowing the dark?

The Handmaid's Tale - Revisited

Just in time for Mother’s Day (May 10th this year - mark your calendars!), the Women’s Bioethics Project Book Club has released its next selection: The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. Download the book club kit developed by WBP advisory board member Sue Trinidad and join us as we explore the bioethical implications of commercial surrogacy, the role of genetic relatedness, redefining concepts of motherhood and the commodification of women's bodies.

Read and discuss with your Mom, your daughters, and friends – let us know what you think – join the conversation!

The latest on designer children...

From the Onion (no further comment needed :>) :


Disney Lab Unveils Its Latest Line Of Genetically Engineered Child Stars

Why I Love Designer Babies, Part Deux

Last month, Kathryn Hinsch started a lively discussion in her post, "Why I Love Designer Babies" -- this month, New Scientist editor Michael LePage adds fuel to the debate on genetic selection:

Fears over 'designer' babies leave children suffering

MADELINE Kara Neumann, age 11, died of diabetes because her parents prayed rather than taking her to doctors. Caleb Moorhead, age 6 months, died after his deeply religious vegan parents refused a simple vitamin injection to cure his malnutrition. The list of children killed by their parents' superstition or wilful ignorance is a long one.

Most people are rightly appalled by such cases. How can parents stand by and let their children die instead of doing all in their power to get the best medical care available?

Yet this is precisely what society is doing. We now have the ability to ensure that children are born free of any one of hundreds of serious genetic disorders, from cystic fibrosis to early-onset cancers. But children continue to be born with these diseases.

All would-be parents should be offered screening to alert them to any genetic disorders they risk passing on to their children. Those at risk should then be offered IVF with pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (IVF-PGD) to ensure any children are healthy.

Why isn't it happening? Because most people still regard attempts to influence which genes our children inherit as taboo. When a fertility clinic in Los Angeles recently offered would-be parents the chance to choose their child's eye colour, for instance, it provoked a storm of criticism that forced the clinic to reconsider

Such fears are misplaced: IVF-PGD is little use for creating designer babies. You cannot select for traits the parents don't have, and the scope for choosing specific traits is very limited. What IVF-PGD is good for is ensuring children do not end up with disastrous genetic disorders.

Nearly 150 years after Darwin unveiled his theory of evolution, we have yet to grasp one of its most unsettling implications: having diseased children is as natural as having healthy ones. Every new life is a gamble, an experiment with novel gene combinations that could be a brilliant success or a tragic failure.

Thanks to technology, we are no longer entirely at the mercy of this callous process. Rather than regarding this ability with suspicion, we should be celebrating it and encouraging its use. Instead, we continue to allow children be born with terrible diseases because of our collective ignorance and superstition. That makes us little better than the parents of Madeline and Caleb.

-- Original article can be found here, subscription may be required.

More on Designer Babies

Kathryn Hinsch, founder and director of the Women's Bioethics Project started a trend with her post, Why I Love Designer Babies -- lots of people are commenting on this and here is just a sampling of the range of views:

From Science Progress, who encourages this as a conversation starter,

to

the AJOB blog, who writes about the Perfect Baby,

to

William Saletan on Slate, who asks "Is the era of designer babies finally here"?

to

the Los Angeles Times, who says we should select for health, not eye color.

We need to continue the dialogue -- your tax deductible gift will help our voices be heard! Please consider a donation to the Women's Bioethics Project. Click here.