Adventures in the New World of Reproductive Technology , by Lori B. Andrews. Henry Holt and Co. 1999. This account of her adventures is a quick read and an enthralling story that should engage and reward the neophyte and sophisticate alike. Andrews presents us with few heroes, and most of her characters are downright money-grubbing, if not nefarious. Men come off much worse than women, but few people come off well.
Government employees appear no better than private researchers.
According to Andrews, who took over from Nancy Wexler as chair of the working group set up to address difficult social issues such as genetic discrimination, the working group was deliberately torpedoed by Collins. As Andrews says, this book is primarily a memoir, and thus rather loosely organized. Abused and maltreated Andrews reminds us of all the ways from negligence to deliberate malfeasance that couples who use reproductive technology can be misused, abused, and maltreated. Sperm donation, for example, began in 1884 with a medical doctor inseminating a woman while she was anesthetized, without her knowledge or consent. A century later, Dr. Cecil Jacobson became mildly famous in Virginia for siring somewhere between 15 and 75 children with his own sperm, when he had told couples that he would be choosing sperm from anonymous donors matched to the husbands' characteristics.