Comparative Biomedical Policy: Governing Assisted Reproductive Technologies, Ivor Bleiklei, Malcolm L. Goggin and Christine Rothmayr, eds., London: Routledge, 2004, pp. 284.

Few issues have the potential to combine elements of science fact and science fiction as does the field of biomedical research and its offshoot, assisted reproductive technologies (ART). As newspapers testify with regularity, this area of science and medicine uniquely combines promises for the improvement of human health but also exemplifies the dangers associated with scientists playing god with the very the building blocks of our species. Confronted with these stark opposites, public authorities have entered the fray and have tried, with varied responses, to frame these practices in such as way as to encourage and stimulate the positive elements of this area of research and medicine, such as in vitro fertilization, while cutting off or severely circumscribing the areas which have been deemed immoral or unethical, such as human cloning. It is where issues of morality or ethics enter the policy discourse that the waters get murky and where, as a result, governments find the arbitration between first-person experiences and societal norms the most difficult.