Pandora's Baby

Fortunately, whether you have to explain the newest facts of life or simply want to understand them yourself, you can now turn to Robin Marantz Henig's beautifully written and timely book on the way in vitro (Latin for in glass ) fertilization, or I.V.F., began with the tinkering of a few researchers during the 1960's, and how it became widely available...Washington has refused to pay for the most controversial avenues of reproductive research. Yet in an age when for-profit companies and university scientists often become partners in the hope of striking it rich, it is no longer possible to close Pandora's box. The New York Times We don't know where reproductive technology ultimately will take society, Henig concludes, but it's likely that we will adapt to new discoveries the way we have so often adapted. Her level-headed book provides a welcome context for the current debate over cloning. Publisher's Weekly Thanks largely to the publicity surrounding [the world's first test tube baby Louise] Brown, and the reassuring normality displayed by her and by the other test-tube babies that followed, Henig worries that we have forgotten the dark, tortured, surreptitious and often just plain weird origins of in vitro technology. She exhumes these beginnings, and in the process reminds readers of just how tentative and suspect IVF was. She also stresses how very recent this lurch into the brave new baby-making world has been and how, like so many other technologies, IVF moved rapidly from horrified disbelief into routine acceptance... [A] lively history. The Washington Post