-Caveat Lector-
From: "Science-Week" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subj: SW BULLETIN July 12, 1999
NOTED CHEMIST CONSIDERS THE AGE OF
MECHANICAL HUMAN REPRODUCTION
In a provocative essay, the chemist Carl Djerassi
(Stanford University, US), who synthesized the first steroid
oral contraceptive in 1951, suggests that the first 50 years
of the new millennium may be considered the "decades of
contraception". Djerassi states that with continuous
improvements in assisted reproductive technologies, "we are
seeing a gradual separation of sex and fertilization, with
sex taking place 'in bed' and fertilization under the
microscope."
According to the author, this separation is shifting the
balance of reproductive power into the domain of women.
Djerassi notes that although still largely unrecognized,
the development of intracytoplasmic sperm injection by
van Steirteghem et al (BE) in 1992 was an even greater
technological achievement than the first in vitro
fertilization in 1977 by Steptoe and Edwards (UK).
Van Steirteghem et al successfully fertilized a human egg
by direct injection of a single sperm under the microscope,
followed by reinsertion of the egg into the woman's uterus.
Djerassi concludes by noting that neither science nor the
humanities have so far adequately prepared us for the
consequences of an age of mechanical reproduction,
"nor for the fact that the effective treatment of genetic
infertility has made the uninheritable inheritable."
(Science 2 Jul 99)
.
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