Customer Reviews

Pandora's Baby: How the First Test Tube Babies Sparked the Reproductive Revolution

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Adjectives like "judicious" and "level headed" (see the Publisher's Weekly review) don't do justice to this lively and probing and timely book. Henig has the gift of conveying complex scientific information painlessly and the stories she tells are riveting, full of hubris, lawsuits,medical cowboys, desperate would-be parents, nutty fundamentalists (in one protest at an in-vitro clinic, they carried a sign that read "Incest in a Test Tube") and, of course, politics. If you've been following the debate over stem cell research, cloning or the work of the President's commission on bioethics ( its chairman,Leon Kass, appears in this book as an early opponent of IVF ) Pandora's Baby is invaluable. And if you haven't been following, this is a great place to start.

In Pandora's Baby, Robin Henig tells of a confrontation which came to a head in 1973, where a hospital administrator in New York learned of a rogue experiment in progress which might have created the first human fetus through in vitro fertilization. His decision fostered a new era in reproduction technology and issues which continues to this day, and Henig's survey of IVF procedures and history provides the story of a technology under fire.

I got this book after reading the excerpts from a online book club since it is a topic I am interested in. Overall the book was very difficult to get through. It is really about medical ethics than it really is about the history of assisted reproduction. The "cast of characters" was very confusing to follow. To learn more about the couple you meet in the beginning takes chapters. I am not a science person but enjoy reading factual accounts. This book is more of an education lesson than entertainment.