Bioethics Beyond Altruism Donating and Transforming Human Biological Materials

6 Ethics for Embryologists 161

routinised practice of HART that are rather different to the standard
‘ethical dilemmas’ that appear in bioethics textbooks or media hyper-
bole. Scientists in our study never viewed their role in HART as ‘playing
God’, nor had they any particular qualms about discarding reproduc-
tive material that demonstrably failed to match the laboratory protocols
for viability. Their concerns emerged out of the social network in which
they were a part. They were troubled that their skills might sometimes
contribute to the development of babies in less than loving homes. They
were troubled that users of the service in full legal compliance with the
regulation should choose to discard embryos that were ‘beautiful’ and
thus likely to result in children. They were ambivalent about the con-
tinued range of uses of their skills, despite full regulatory approval for
new variations on family formation. More than anything, these reflec-
tions demonstrate that, while policy may delineate with precision the
line between ethical and non-ethical conduct in human reproduction,
the implementation of such policies in practice is rather more fraught.

Notes

1. The HART Act (2004) defines a range of illegal IVF activities including
   commercial surrogacy and gamete and embryo trading, human embryo
   manipulation and social sex selection.


2. ICSI is a treatment method of male infertility in which a single sperm is
   injected directly into the egg. The procedure is complex and performed
   under microscopes and requires considerable practice on the embryolo-
   gist’s part before it can be performed successfully.


3. We note that Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) is the accepted
   term of use in the social sciences, but we prefer the term Human
   Assisted Reproductive Technology (HART), as the HART Act under-
   writes the use of the technologies for humans that we discuss in this
   chapter.


4. PGD is way of testing the genetic make-up of embryos prior to their
   implantation in a woman’s womb in order to check for genetic differ-
   ence. The test is generally used to avoid implanting an embryo with vari-
   ous types of genetic diseases and anomalies.