Beyond Bioethics: A Proposal for Modernizing the Regulation of Human Biotechnologies

few seem to notice outside the medical and scientific communities. According to the Centers for Disease Control, in 1995 over 280 fertility programs were operating in the United States. Nine years later, in 2004, this figure had risen by 47%, to 411. An additional 50 clinics were also operating but not reporting their success rates, according to the CDC. Should this trend continue, procreation by technological means could become a serious option for a significant fraction of the American public. Meanwhile, investments in biomedical science, which includes several fields of research that involve the manipulation of reproductive tissue such as animal embryos, eggs and sperm, have grown significantly. The NIH budget rose from $12 billion in 1996 to $28.5 billion in 2006. What are we to make of all this progress? In this essay we argue that scientific and medical progress related to reproductive medicine and biomedical research is