The Clone Age : Adventures in the New World of Reproductive Technology [Hardcover]

Lori B. Andrews (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0805060804 | ISBN-13: 978-0805060805 | Publication Date: May 5, 1999 | Edition: 1st

Lori Andrews passed her bar exam the day the first test-tube baby was born. Since that time she has become the world's most visible expert on the legal and ethical implications of reproductive technology, sought after to assess the rights of cryonically susped severed heads, the legal entanglements of surrogate motherhood, and the ethics of creating babies from dead men's sperm. She has been an advisor on genetic and reproductive technology to the president and Congress, the World Health Organization, the FBI, and such oddly interested parties as the emirate of Dubai. In this provocative memoir, she relates her experiences, unmasking the bizarre motives and methods of a new breed of scientist, bringing to life the wrenching issues we all face as venture capital floods medical research, technology races ahead of legal and ethical ground rules, and ordinary people struggle to maintain both human dignity and their own emotional balance.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Yesterday's science fiction is today's litigation, and nobody knows that better than Lori B. Andrews, an attorney specializing in genetic and reproductive technology. Her book The Clone Age is a personal look at the sweeping changes that have affected the way we think of making babies: in vitro fertilization (IVF), surrogate motherhood, and, of course, the very real prospect of human cloning. Andrews has advised physicians, legislatures, and various governments on the legal and ethical aspects of these technologies, defending the rights of prospective parents and donors and blazing trails through territory that was literally inaccessible just a few years ago. Imagine Solomon confronted with the dilemma of a child born to a surrogate mother from donated egg and sperm at the request of an infertile couple: Would she have five parents, two, or none? Andrews has confronted this and many other puzzlers, and her report from the front is both entertaining and thought-provoking.

While she has spent much of her career arguing for the use of IVF and other technology to further reproductive choices, she does favor regulation to curb the field's dark side, such as the thinly veiled racism of nouveau eugenicists who want to "boost" the gene pool with (mostly American and European) Nobel Prize-winners' sperm. She herself has drawn the line at human cloning, which she feels serves no useful purpose and is too easily abused to be allowed as a reproductive strategy. Whether this view will prevail, as so many of her others have, will be decided in time, as today's litigation becomes tomorrow's policy. --Rob Lightner

From Publishers Weekly

In the brave new world of reproductive technology, legal and moral issues sprout as freely as bacteria in a petri dish. A professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law and director of the Institute for Science, Law and Technology at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Andrews uses first-person accounts of her own legal work and summaries of pertinent news events to explore the burgeoning realm of genetic manipulation. By providing concrete examples of the controversial issues, Andrews personalizes such seemingly remote possibilities as human cloning. In vitro fertilization, egg donation, frozen embryos, surrogate mothers, gender determination and other contemporary biological phenomena are examined with the knowing eye of an attorney on the lookout for legal conundrums: "If an unmarried woman used donor sperm, could she sue the donor for child support? Could the resulting child, like adoptees in some countries, learn the identity of her donor father?" As a consultant to courts, doctors and various government agencies, and as a mother (via the old-fashioned method of conception), Andrews takes the reader on an eye-opening tour of laboratories and legal issues. Her writing is lively, informed by references to literature and contemporary events, and her narrative is marked by droll, ironic commentaries. Weaving tales from Dubai to Canada and places in between, Andrews resembles a modern-day Gulliver, alternately astounded, bemused or saddened by each new boundary crossed by the latter-day sciences of reproduction. Agent, Amanda Urban at ICM.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.; 1st edition (May 5, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805060804
• ISBN-13: 978-0805060805
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,689,460 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lori Andrews is a law professor, a public interest lawyer and mystery novelist. She's taught at Princeton, written for a television legal drama, and advised governments around the world about emerging technologies. Now she's focusing on how social networks are changing our lives, for good and for ill.

Lori started her consumer activism when she was seven and her Ken doll went bald. Her letter to Mattel got action. She's been fighting for people's rights ever since.

A professor of law at Chicago-Kent College of Law, Lori frequently appears on television, including on Oprah, 60 Minutes, Good Morning America, and Nightline. The American Bar Association Journal calls her "a lawyer with a literary bent who has the scientific chops to rival any CSI investigator."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Scarier than any horror movie!, December 8, 1999

By 

A Lover of Good Books (Gill, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Clone Age : Adventures in the New World of Reproductive Technology (Hardcover)

Did you know that a doctor can take a sample of your tissues, isolate some factor and then SELL it to drug companies for big bucks without asking your permission or paying you a dime?

I didn't, until I read this book.

What about the profits that gene researchers are making by patenting YOUR genes? Or about the undisclosed financial interest that regulators have in allowing such patents to proceed.

It's all in here and it makes for some very scary reading.

While most of us weren't looking, that portion of the medical community motivated primarily by greed has ventured into some very odd territory. The repercussions may make medicine even more expensive to the consumer at the same time as it makes health insurance even more unattainable.

In a world where medical mistakes already cost more lives each year than Cancer or AIDS, we cannot afford to trust our doctors to watch out for our best interests. This book makes it painfully clear the extent to which profit, rather than care for patients drives genetic and reproductive medicine.

A MUST read.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A courageous memoir that should be required reading, July 7, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Clone Age : Adventures in the New World of Reproductive Technology (Hardcover)

Seven years ago, wrestling with a hopeless prognosis of several world-class fertility specialists, I was haunted by a nightmare. Lost in a labyrinth of examining rooms I watched men and women in lab coats rushing past me. They belonged to a new hybrid species programmed to make as much money as they could. The dream left me with a feeling of dread, as if I had put my life into the wrong hands and almost lost it. In the last seven years of working with fertility issues I've heard stories of exploitation, greed, incompetence. I've met women and men who were living my nightmare. Still I was not prepared for the devastating reality of Ms. Andrews' courageous memoir. Anyone with a conscience, fertility expert or plain-clothes-human alike can't but ask herself after reading The Clone Age: How do we, as a society, insure that the miracles of technology do not estrange us from the miracles of our own bodies and souls?

Julia Indichova, author of Inconceivable: Winning the Fertility Game

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must-read for anyone who's ever been an embryo, August 23, 2001

By 

Verbtuoso (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Clone Age: Adventures in the New World of Reproductive Technology (Paperback)

Lori B. Andrews, the foremost expert on legal issues related to reproductive matters, has written what must be one of the most important books ever to address the fundamental building blocks of all human life. Anyone who cares deeply about any issue surrounding in vitro fertilization, cloning, sperm donors, the use of body tissue by science and the ethics related to these matter must read this book. In clear, exciting, entertaining and occasionally very humorous language, Andrews gives frightening details of the latest breakthroughs in research technology. Here's are just a few of the many provocative topics introduced: did you know that technology exists for harvesting eggs from human female fetuses? That it's technically possible to abort a girl child, but use it's eggs to create another human being at a later date? That sperm has been frequently 'harvested' from dead men? Or the fact that, although cloned animals often have severe defects, this procedure is being pushed forward in different places around the world? And government oversight of radical new reproductive technology is practically non-existent, while other medical procedures are always exposed to extreme scrutiny. Read this book! You'll never read another story about human reproduction or cloning the same way again.