“A Take-Home Baby”

2019 ◽  
pp. 3-21
Author(s):  
Robert L. Klitzman

This introductory chapter provides an outline of the structure and themes of the book, and describes how I became interested in this topic—through both personal and professional experiences. The chapter presents a brief overview of infertility and several assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs), including new technologies (e.g., gene editing and CRISPR) and their history; recent statistics on use of these interventions in the United States and elsewhere; several relevant current policies, guidelines, and recent legal cases in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere (e.g., from the FDA, CDC, and the American Society for Reproductive Medicine [ASRM]) pertaining to sale and purchase of so-called third-party gametes (i.e., human eggs and sperm); costs and insurance coverage; ethical issues posed by ARTs (e.g., regarding eugenics); and other aspects of these treatments. The chapter also provides an overview of the qualitative methods used in the research that forms a basis of the book.

2019 ◽  
pp. 252-271
Author(s):  
Robert L. Klitzman

The United States regulates assisted reproductive technologies far less than do other Western countries, most of which have more nationalized health insurance. US states vary widely in whether they have any laws and, if so, what. Governmental agencies (e.g., Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and professional organizations (e.g., American Medical Association, American Society of Reproductive Medicine) have begun addressing several areas but could potentially do more. Improved national and professional policies are needed regarding several areas, including egg and sperm donation, egg donor agencies, numbers of embryos transferred into wombs, gestational surrogacy, oversight of providers, insurance coverage, and data collection. Doctors generally perceive problems in the field but argue that industry self-regulation, rather than government policy, is adequate. Yet many providers fail to follow current guidelines and regulations. Moreover, new technologies continue to develop, including gene editing of embryos through CRISPR and mitochondrial replacement therapy (so-called three-parent babies). More data and research are crucial on current use of procedures and long-term medical and psychological follow-up of patients, egg donors, gestational surrogates, and offspring, to evaluate, for instance, the effectiveness of egg freezing and longitudinal follow-up of children born through these procedures.


2015 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Stapleton ◽  
Daniel Skinner

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has prompted numerous gender and sexuality controversies. We describe and analyze those involving assisted reproductive technologies (ART). ART in the United States has been regulated in piecemeal fashion, with oversight primarily by individual states. While leaving state authority largely intact, the ACA federalized key practices by establishing essential health benefits (EHBs) that regulate insurance markets and prohibit insurance-coverage denials based on pre-existing conditions. Whatever their intentions, the ACA’s drafters thus put infertility in a subtly provocative new light clinically, financially, normatively, politically, and culturally. With particular attention to normative and political dynamics embedded in plausible regulatory trajectories, we review—and attempt topreview—the ACA’s effects on infertility-related delivery of health services, on ART utilization, and on reproductive medicine as a factor in American society.


2021 ◽  
pp. 61-74
Author(s):  
Scott Timcke

This chapter looks at the response of the ruling class to an organic crisis in the United States. With an aim to understand the character of the unfreedom and class rule, the chapter examines the class struggle 'from above'. It describes the Trump administration as a resemblance of Gramsci's description of a Caesarian response to an 'organic crisis', a protracted event which comes about when 'the forces in conflict balance each other in a catastrophic manner', leaving space for a third party to intervene. This chapter demonstrates that there is an intense class war in the United States. Using the term 'organic crisis', Gramsci described a conjecture where a prolonged crisis hinders the relatively effective management of contradictions, while concurrently the maturation of these contradictions makes it exceedingly difficult to defend them. In moments of an organic crisis, factions ramp up their contests to a degree that could be considered an escalation of intra-elite competition. The chapter examines several interlinked events to trace some of the front lines in the escalation of intra-elite competition. As the ruling class's influence traverses all aspects of American society, the consequences of escalating intra-elite competition can be seen in most places. The chapter focuses on the linkages between finance and formal contestations of power. It argues that some analysts simplify the primary lines of division in contemporary class warfare.


Author(s):  
Laurence Brunet ◽  
Véronique Fournier

This chapter compares French and American approaches to assisted reproductive technologies (ART). These countries are a fascinating (and unexplored) mirror: the United States focuses on the individual, while France emphasizes the best interest of society as a whole. This results in an access to ART largely open in the United States, yet all costs are covered by patients, and an access strictly regulated by law in France (and quite restricted until recent changes), yet costs are fully financed. This chapter introduces readers to the legal framework of access to ART in France and its cultural foundations. It highlights the insistence on the “right to privacy” in the United States, a concept much less valued in France, and concludes with a discussion, using clinical cases, of the ethical issues underlying tensions between reproductive autonomy and public policymaking, which differ in both countries.


1998 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 265-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra H. Johnson

The capacity to treat pain has never been greater; but, as you will read in the articles that follow, the problem of undertreated and neglected pain in the United States persists. Deep-seated perceptions and practices undergird this strong and well-documented pattern of neglect. Among the reasons frequently noted for the inadequacy of treatment for pain, however, is that the legal system actually penalizes effective interventions to relieve pain while it leaves neglect of pain unthreatened. It is the mission of the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics (ASLME) to explore areas, such as this one, where developments in medicine directly encounter the law and, in turn, create ethical issues for clinicians, regulators, patients, and lawyers.This special issue of the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics is part of a multi-year project in which ASLME, with the wonderful support of the Mayday Fund, has worked to address legal and regulatory barriers to effective pain relief.


2002 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
James S Keebler

This article describes the development and growth of various modes of transportation in the United States and recent trends in the length, size and value of domestic shipments. Changes in the transportation of goods in the United States are being driven largely by four factors—the shift toward a digital economy, the growth of third-party logistics providers, globalism, and the application of new technologies. Finally, this paper looks at emerging forms of supply chain integration and operation.


Author(s):  
Andrew Valls

The persistence of racial inequality in the United States raises deep and complex questions of racial justice. Some observers argue that public policy must be “color-blind,” while others argue that policies that take race into account should be defended on grounds of diversity or integration. This chapter begins to sketch an alternative to both of these, one that supports strong efforts to address racial inequality but that focuses on the conditions necessary for the liberty and equality of all. It argues that while race is a social construction, it remains deeply embedded in American society. A conception of racial justice is needed, one that is grounded on the premises provided by liberal political theory.


Author(s):  
Seth W. Whiting ◽  
Rani A. Hoff

Advancements in technologies and their mass-scale adoption throughout the United States create rapid changes in how people interact with the environment and each other and how they live and work. As technologies become commonplace in society through increased availability and affordability, several problems may emerge, including disparate use among groups, which creates divides in attainment of the beneficial aspects of a technology’s use and coinciding mental health issues. This chapter briefly overviews new technologies and associated emerging applications in information communication technologies, social media networks, video games and massively multiplayer online role-playing games, and online gambling, then examines the prevalence of use among the general population and its subgroups and further discusses potential links between mental health issues associated with each technology and implications of overuse.


2010 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-128
Author(s):  
Michael E. Harkin

This article examines the first decades of the field of ethnohistory as it developed in the United States. It participated in the general rapprochement between history and anthropology of mid-twentieth-century social science. However, unlike parallel developments in Europe and in other research areas, ethnohistory specifically arose out of the study of American Indian communities in the era of the Indian Claims Commission. Thus ethnohistory developed from a pragmatic rather than a theoretical orientation, with practitioners testifying both in favor of and against claims. Methodology was flexible, with both documentary sources and ethnographic methods employed to the degree that each was feasible. One way that ethnohistory was innovative was the degree to which women played prominent roles in its development. By the end of the first decade, the field was becoming broader and more willing to engage both theoretical and ethical issues raised by the foundational work. In particular, the geographic scope began to reach well beyond North America, especially to Latin America, where archival resources and the opportunities for ethnographic research were plentiful, but also to areas such as Melanesia, where recent European contact allowed researchers to observe the early postcontact period directly and to address the associated theoretical questions with greater authority. Ethnohistory is thus an important example of a field of study that grew organically without an overarching figure or conscious plan but that nevertheless came to engage central issues in cultural and historical analysis.


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