QUEST FOR PERFECTION: The Drive to Breed Better Human Beings

Gina Maranto

ISBN 10: 0684800292 / ISBN 13: 9780684800295

Editore: Scribner, 1996

Former library book; May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Codice articolo G0684800292I4N10

Riassunto:

In Quest for Perfection, Gina Maranto traces the history of society's attempts to control human destiny by regulating birth outcomes. Drawing together material from the fields of animal behavior, paleontology, anthropology, embryology, genetics, and reproductive medicine, Maranto provides a riveting account of how the perfecting impulse has colored Western social and political thought and history. More importantly, she explores how the development of birth technologies, from artificial insemination in the 1800s to in vitro fertilization in the 1970s, was carried out by scientists who foresaw - and in many cases championed - the eugenical potential of manipulating sperm, eggs, and embryos.
Maranto reveals that eugenics, rightly reviled for the crimes committed in its name in Nazi Germany and elsewhere, is far from a dead enterprise. Today, in treating couples for infertility, medicine has edged closer than ever to the made-to-order baby. With the knowledge gained from the massive worldwide effort to map the human chromosome, the Human Genome Project, scientists will gain greater power to dictate the essential makeup of future children.
Promoted on therapeutic grounds, the enterprise of assisted reproduction has raised exhilarating and frightening prospects: from infants born without debilitating defects and inherited diseases to the likelihood that individuals and governments will decide which embryos are worthy of being brought to term based not on the sanctity of life but upon parental whim or societal fiat. Quest for Perfection is an important contribution to the debate over the ethical and political implications of attempts to direct our own evolution.

L'autore: Gina Maranto has been writing about science for 20 years and has won the National Association of Science Writers Science-in-Society Award. Her articles have appeared in the New York Times, Scientific American, The Atlantic Monthly, and other publications. Maranto lives in Miami Beach with her husband, author Mark Derr, and their three dogs.

Dati bibliografici

Titolo: QUEST FOR PERFECTION: The Drive to Breed ...
Casa editrice: Scribner
Data di pubblicazione: 1996
Legatura: Hardcover
Condizione: Very Good
Condizione sovraccoperta: No Jacket