Quest for Perfection: The Drive to Breed Better Human Beings"In Quest for Perfection, Gina Maranto traces the history of society's attempts to control human destiny by regulating birth outcomes. Drawing together material from the fields of animal behavior, paleontology, anthropology, embryology, genetics, and reproductive medicine, Maranto provides a riveting account of how the perfecting impulse has colored Western social and political thought and history. More importantly, she explores how the development of birth technologies, from artificial insemination in the 1800s to in vitro fertilization in the 1970s, was carried out by scientists who foresaw - and in many cases championed - the eugenical potential of manipulating sperm, eggs, and embryos." "Maranto reveals that eugenics, rightly reviled for the crimes committed in its name in Nazi Germany and elsewhere, is far from a dead enterprise. Today, in treating couples for infertility, medicine has edged closer than ever to the made-to-order baby. With the knowledge gained from the massive worldwide effort to map the human chromosome, the Human Genome Project, scientists will gain greater power to dictate the essential makeup of future children." "Promoted on therapeutic grounds, the enterprise of assisted reproduction has raised exhilarating and frightening prospects: from infants born without debilitating defects and inherited diseases to the likelihood that individuals and governments will decide which embryos are worthy of being brought to term based not on the sanctity of life but upon parental whim or societal fiat. Quest for Perfection is an important contribution to the debate over the ethical and political implications of attempts to direct our own evolution."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved |
Contents
INTRODUCTION II | 11 |
Group Portrait with Babies | 21 |
They Kill Their Young | 36 |
Copyright | |
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abortion American amniocentesis animals argued artificial insemination assisted reproduction attempt baby biological biologist birth blood body born breeding British Cambridge cells century child chromosomes clinic cloning conceived conception couples cryopreservation culture disease donation donor Edwards egg donation egg donors eggs embryo transfer embryology ethical eugenicists eugenics fallopian tubes father female fetus fetuses follicle Galton genes genetic geneticists germ plasm Grifo gynecologist heredity hormones husband Ibid infanticide infants infertility Institute IVF and embryo John Journal laparoscopy lives Mahlstedt male Malthus marriage Medicine moral mother National natural offspring oocytes ovaries parents patients percent physicians Pincus Plutarch population pregnancy procedure produce Quoted rabbits race reproductive technologies result scientific scientists semen sexual social Society species sperm banks Steptoe sterilization technique tion trans Trounson University Press uterus vitro fertilization wife woman women wrote York zona pellucida