Designing Babies: How Technology Is Changing the Ways We Create Children

ABOUT THE BOOK

Since the first “test tube baby” was born over 40 years ago, In Vitro Fertilization and other Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) have advanced in extraordinary ways, producing millions of babies. The possibilities of this rapidly developing technology are astounding–especially in the United States. As these possibilities are increasingly realized, physicians in many specialties, from OB/GYN and pediatrics to genetics, internal medicine and psychiatry, along with potential parents and policymakers, face complex and critical questions about the use–or possible misuse–of ARTs. Designing Babies: How Technology is Changing the Ways We Create Children confronts these questions, examining the medical, ethical, social, and policy concerns surrounding reproductive technologies. Based on in-depth interviews with providers and patients, Robert Klitzman explores how physicians and patients are facing quandaries of whether, when, and how to use ARTs. He articulates the full range of these crucial issues, from the economic pressures patients face to the moral and social challenges encountered in making decisions

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robert Klitzman, MD, is a professor of psychiatry at the College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Joseph Mailman School of Public Health, and the director of the online and in-person Bioethics Masters and Certificate Programs at Columbia University.