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Changing Conceptions: How Science and Law are
Shaping Future Generations
In 1978, Dr. Robert Edwards shocked the world by engineering
the birth of Louise Brown -- the first child created through in
vitro fertilization. In 1986, surrogate mother Mary
Beth Whitehead Gould turned the New Jersey courts topsy-turvy
by suing for custody for the child she contractually agreed to
gestate and surrender to rearing parents in the Baby M
case. In the ensuing years, the development of new reproductive
and genetic technologies abounded, ranging from post-menopausal
pregnancies to genetic testing of embryos before transfer.
Then, in 1997, Dr. Keith Campbell and his colleagues at Scotland's
Roslin Institute cloned a sheep named Dolly.
In December 1997, Edwards, Campbell, and Whitehead Gould, joined
by scientific, legal, and ethics experts, participated in the
Changing Conceptions conference sponsored by ISLAT to explore
the cutting-edge issues surrounding procreative technologies:
Where is the science going? How is it affecting society?
Who will decide what happens next? Where show we draw the
line? The conference addressed a range of issues from genetic
engineering of embryos to the creation of children from sperm
of dead men.
Following the conference, Lori Andrews and Nanette Elster establish
the ISLAT Reproductive Technologies Working Group to identify
policy gaps in the science and the law of assistant reproductive
technologies (ART). The Working Group subsequently undertook
a project to determine what scientific research is necessary to
insure the safety of reproductive technologies, what follow-up
studies other participants are needed, what should be disclosed
to potential users of the technologies, what legal doctrine to
necessary to turn parenthood, and whether certain technologies
should be forbidden. The Working Group drafted model cloning
legislation which is been influential in state legislatures and
Congress. The Working Group published a major policy analysis
of reproductive technologies in Science,
with recommendations for policy development. It also published
a legal analysis to recommendations about human cloning in the
University
of Southern California Journal of Law and Technology.
The Working Group is currently focusing on developing research
to determine the medical, social and economic effects of multiple
births, a common problem in ART.
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