Robert L. Klitzman's new book is Designing Babies: How Technology is Changing the Way We Create Children.From his Q&A with Deborah Kalb:
Q: Why did you decide to focus on reproductive technology in your new book?--Marshal Zeringue
A: I wrote a previous book, Am I My Genes?, seven years ago. I interviewed people about why they were getting genetic testing—people who were at risk of different diseases, including Huntington’s disease. If you have the gene, you will die of it. There’s a 50 percent chance that each of your children will have it.
People said, Should I have kids? Should I abort the fetus? If I screen my genes, what will that mean about my own life—I would have been screened out as an embryo.
And also, a friend asked me to be a sperm donor, that I wouldn’t have to be involved in raising the kid. I thought, That’s interesting. There are friends undergoing IVF, gay couples having kids. Ten percent of all people in the world are infertile, and people are using IVF, and there are a lot of questions.
The U.S. is one of three countries where you can buy or sell human eggs. It’s the only country where you can rent a womb. It’s become a multi-billion-dollar industry, and with the technology, you can...[read on]