By Michelle Meyer This post is part of Bill of Health‘s symposium on the Law, Ethics, and Science of Re-Identification Demonstrations. You can call up all of the symposium contributions here. We’ll continue to post contributions throughout the week. —MM Dear Misha: In your open letter to me, you write: No one is asking you…
[Cross-Posted at Prawfsblawg] In the United States, most sperm donations* are anonymous. By contrast, many developed nations require sperm donors to be identified, typically requiring new sperm (and egg) donors to put identifying information into a registry that is made available to a donor-conceived child once they reach the age of 18. Recently, advocates have…
[Posted on behalf of Elizabeth Pike and Kayte Spector-Bagdady from the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues – and cross-posted here.] In the most recent issue of the Hastings Center Report, Drs. Amy Gutmann and James Wagner of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues (the Bioethics Commission), contributed to the lively debate surrounding the identifiability of genetic…
[Cross-Posted at Prawfsblawg] The Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics has just published an article by me on transplant tourism, that discusses the burgeoning international market for buying and selling kidneys. I review the existing data from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India, which is pretty deplorable. As I show the vast majority of these sellers are…
As John Robertson mentioned in his post earlier this week, in order to avoid age-related infertility many women are considering or will soon consider using egg freezing, as the technology has dramatically improved. As compared to freezing preembryos, for example, this is an attractive option since many of these women (heterosexual or otherwise) may not…
First, and unrelated to this post, I wanted to say that like everyone here in Boston (and it seems throughout the U.S.) my heart goes out to the folks injured by Monday’s blast and their friends and family. Now on to the substance. I have participated in a number of Supreme Court amicus briefs both…
By John Robertson Glenn Cohen and Eli Adashi have an interesting Sounding Board piece in the latest NEJM[i] on made-to-order embryos for sale. A California clinic offering this option has garnered enormous publicity. It might, however, have stimulated more bioethical thinking than actual demand for its services. On the bioethical side, Glenn and Eli survey the…
The New England Journal of Medicine just published a new article by me (and my frequent co-author Dean Eli Adashi) entitled “Made-to-Order Embryos for Sale — A Brave New World?” As we note in the article: The proliferation of commercial gamete sources (e.g., sperm and oocyte banks) has opened the door to a made-to-order embryo…
[Editor’s Note: This is Glenn Cohen guest posting on behalf of Kim Mutcherson, what follows below is her post. I will be posting on behalf of several symposium contributors over the next few days.] On Friday, April 5, a group of almost 30 (mostly legal) scholars gathered at Rutgers Law-Camden to have difficult conversations about…
Rebecca Skloot, author of the very interesting and well-written bestseller The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks — a book about the poor and badly treated black woman whose cells became the famous (and very heavily used) HeLa cells, medicine and the treatment of African-Americans, and who owns products derived from one’s genes — had an…
