144 R.P. Fitzgerald and M. Legge
Stranded on the Shores of Reproductive
Medicine
On first arriving in one of the laboratories, we were greeted by the head
of the clinic who ushered us rapidly towards the commencing weekly
ethical meeting for all staff. ‘This could be valuable, yes, very valuable
indeed for your study—you know you needn’t go further than repro-
ductive medicine to find all the ethical issues in medicine!’ This mut-
tered remark accompanied our propelled entry into a cramped room of
unknown faces, all of which turned in synchrony to see the observers
thrust into their midst ahead of the meeting’s Chair. As the first case
of the meeting unfolded, a complex reproductive history emerged. It
touched on sperm donation, a partially completed gender reassignment,
the rights of donors to continued contact with offspring, comments
around the nature of the gendered self and the rights of children to
know their genitor/genitrix. These issues were much less commonplace
considerations a decade ago than they are today.
Reproductive medicine has in fact always been a controversial prac-
tice (Edwards 2006 ). Human Assisted Reproductive Technology
(HART)^3 is so routinised today, that it is perhaps only a historian of
science who would know that Edwards and Steptoe—the inventors of
IVF—initially had significant difficulty with students, colleagues and
university administration over what many perceived to be the unethical
and ‘distasteful’ nature of HART (Edwards 2006 : 9). The UK Medical
Research Council regarded their proposed programme of research into
HART as unethical throughout the 1970s. This had the effect of push-
ing the preliminary scientific research towards private funding (Johnson
et al. 2010 ) and onto a location outside of Edwards’ home university
grounds.
Fewer still would know that the effects of IVF on the human off-
spring produced were part of a long ‘natural’ experiment that has taken
many years for data to be collected (Colpin and Bosseart 2008 ), even as
these procedures were conducted in increasing numbers. Patient rights
activists would be interested to learn that it was through an Australian
schoolgirl’s high school assignment that one of the first larger (n = 47)
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