Description
Book SynopsisThis new edition of Sarah Franklin's classic monograph on the development of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) includes two entirely new chapters reflecting on the relevance of the book's findings in the context of the past two decades and providing a state-of-the-art' review of the field today.
Over the past 25 years, both the assisted conception industry and the academic field of reproductive studies have grown enormously. IVF, in particular, is belatedly becoming recognised as one of the most influential technologies of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with a far-reaching set of implications that have to date been underestimated, understudied and under-reported. This pioneering text was the first to explore the emergence of commercial IVF in the United Kingdom, where the technique was originally developed. During the 1980s, the British Parliament devised a unique system of comprehensive national regulation of assisted reproduction amidst fractious public and media
Table of Contents
Introduction to the 1st edition. Introduction to the second edition. 1.Conception among the anthropologists. 2.Contested conceptions in the enterprise culture. 3.The ‘obstacle course’: the reproductive work of IVF. 4.‘It just takes over’: IVF as a ‘way of life’. 5.Hhaving to try ‘and ‘having to choose’: how IVF ‘makes sense’. 6.The embodiment of progress. Afterword
