May 27, 2008
For years, sperm banks have focused solely on sperm donors and the women they get pregnant—not the offspring they produce. That’s about to change. Who’s more likely to be treated: a premature infant, or an older patient with a lower chance of survival? “Frankenstein Science“: Has Britain lost its way?...
May 21, 2008
It’s infertility awareness week in Canada. More Canadians are looking to the U.S. for egg donors. One in five Irish couples experience infertility. In the U.K.: A good summary of the debate over the HFEA. Do embryos need fathers? Despite a recent defeat, the abortion debate is heating up. Is Britain “one step...
May 21, 2008
“Forget about the venerable beat-the-clock thriller,” says Canadian columnist Michael D. Reid. “Today, the beat-the-biological-clock flick is the thing.” That trend continues next month with Miss Conception, a comedy about the escapades of a 33-year-old woman (Heather Graham) with a family history of early...
May 20, 2008
Confirming that the recent “older mothers” craze is not going away, there’s now a magazine devoted to the “advanced maternal age” mom, Plum: The first-ever magazine dedicated to the 35+ childbearing woman, Plum is a unique blend of an informative health journal and an insightful lifestyle magazine. With...
May 19, 2008
It’s time for round two of the “dignity debate.” The latest: BioEdge says Pinker is “no philosopher.” Stuart Rennie asks if autonomy is in any “better conceptual shape” than dignity. Noah Millman gives “one cheer for Pinker even if he is being a jerk.” (See too the...
May 19, 2008
Yale blogger Helen Rittelmeyer says the rise of the “fertility film” is “a good thing“: I’m not sure why Quart is unhappy about the move towards seeing mother- and fatherhood as redemptive, given that it moves us away from trying to charge romantic relationships with the burden of making overgrown...
May 15, 2008
The Debate over “Dignity” continues. EPPC’s Yuval Levin hits back: an “insulting, ill-informed…tirade.” Wesley Smith: Pinker’s “stupid tantrum.” The guys at Reason are loving it. MORE: Ross Douthat, James Poulos, Larry Arnhart, and Ramesh Ponnuru. Are embryos like plants? Ryan...
May 15, 2008
In Mother Jones, feminist writer Alissa Quart looks at the new spate of pregnancy comedies (Juno, Knocked Up, Then She Found Me, Baby Mama), which she dubs the “Fertility Film.” Like me, she finds these movies “conservative at heart”: [T]hese films recast the “pro-choice” narrative of feminists’...
May 12, 2008
Donna Dickenson is one of Britain’s leading experts on medical ethics. As professor of medical ethics and humanities at Birkbeck College in London, Dickenson has written on a variety of topics, including death and dying, assisted reproductive technology, the patenting of the human genome, and women’s health. In 2006, she...
May 8, 2008
“The incredible hunch that told me I’d met my sperm donor father.” A Phony War on Science: Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson discusses Yuval Levin’s New Atlantis essay, “Science and the Left.” “Who decides what’s ethical and what isn’t?”: The ethics of...