Customer Reviews

Designing Babies: The Brave New World of Reproductive Technology

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I diagree with the 'Amazon ' reviewer who says the writer's work is morally faulty. I think that Roger Gosden has written a very clear general survey of the up--to- date situation of 'the brave new world of reproductive technology' to 1999 the year the book was published.
He is not pretentious and not at all sensational.
He soberly shows the difficulties with new reproductive technologies and shows how there are no miraculous solutions to fertility problems.
He does take a strong position favoring IVF(in vitro fertilization) and points to many healthy children born through the process, and many families which now have children which would not otherwise. I agree that he does not go deeply into the questions of 'who' and ' who not' should be allowed to make use of this technology, though he clearly states that the welfare of the expected child must be paramount. I myself think that IVF is a fundamental factor in transforming the human situation, the family , and all we think of and know of in terms of our identity in intimate life. I do not think a book has yet been written which traces the true philosophical human implications of this technology.
But Gosden is a professional researcher and his survey of the field is not meant to probe in depth the total societal implication.
The title of the book is perhaps a bit sensational, for the subject of 'designer babies' occupies only a small part of the book. Most of the time he is talking about reproductive technology, and if anything eliminating genetic defects rather than 'programming' for positive ones.
This is a well- written fair survey, with a useable index. A truly fine work.

I learned a great deal from this book on the state of reproductive science. However, I was chilled by the author's total lack of concern with the moral and ethical dimensions of tampering with our genes. He seems concerned only with the question of whether a procedure is safe and will benefit the child and its parents. Perhaps as a scientist he does not consider this within his purview, but it is the moral/religious debate which is causing the most angst in our society on issues surrounding the questions of "designer babies" and the termination of pregnancies.

One of your customer reviewers expressed disappointment that the author had spent too much time on the ethics and not enough on procedures. I wondered whether we had read the same book! Yes, he could have written a more specific "how to" book, but any ethical discussion is pretty one-sided; there is more to the other side than fear of the unknown, which seems to be the only negative concern the author seems to recognize.

In Designing Babies: The Brave New World Of Reproductive Technology, reproductive expert Roger Gosden provides the non-specialist general reader with a compelling and comprehensive overview of what is happening in the biological science of assisted reproduction. Written in clear, non-technical language, Designing Babies explains this rapidly emerging science and the several social and ethical dilemmas involved. The reader is given an accessible understanding of the near future medical goals of gene screening, prenatal genetic repair, cloning, and prenatal sex selection. Designing Babies is a very highly, "reader friendly" addition to school and community library biological science collections.

I hoped to find this book to be informative and factual, and if you searched long and hard you could find that in a few places. But all in all I was pretty disappointed because I was looking for something that was more a description of actual procedures and technology. If that is not what you are looking for, and you are looking for a lot of moral and ethical background, it was generally written clearly and easy to follw.