More than three decades have passed since the first test-tube baby was born in Manchester, England in 1978. Today, in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment is a common practice. Biomedicine and biotechnologies deriving from IVF (eg. stem cell research and regenerative medicine) have dramatically advanced since the late 1970s. As a result, IVF and related bioscience and biomedical technologies have become a normal part of contemporary life. It is against this backdrop that Sarah Franklin’s Biological Relatives provides new and timely narratives on the history of such technologies.
Biological Relatives demonstrates two core themes in the development of IVF and related scientific fields. First, it elucidates the ways in which the recent expansion of bioscience, biotechnology and regenerative medicine has owed much to advances in embryology and the popularisation of IVF. Franklin here argues how IVF has contributed to the transformation of biology and the understanding of ‘biology as technology’. With regard to the second theme, it describes in what ways and on what grounds the notions of kinship, human reproduction and gender have been reconstructed in the normalisation and advancement processes of IVF, and vice versa.
Franklin builds her central argument in three sections. Chapters 1 and 2 shed light on the complex dynamics of biological and embryological progress with reference to Marxist concepts about the relationship between human beings, tools, machines and labour. The book shows how continuous tool-making in the field of embryology has been incorporated into the enhancement of biology. Likewise, Franklin discusses how biomaterials, notably embryonic stem cells, have become part of the actual tools of bioscience. By referencing Marxist concepts, these chapters illustrate that the field of biology has now evolved into ‘biology as technology’ in line with the expansion of embryology, and vice versa.
These themes are continued in a second section, comprising Chapters 3 and 7. In particular, Franklin discusses cutting-edge IVF technologies in conjunction with Foucault’s genealogical approach to the development of embryology and IVF. In this analysis, she mobilises the ‘frontier idiom’: describing scientific progress as not only the steady march of knowledge ‘forward’, but also ‘a site of confusion, hybridity, destruction and conflict’. Adopting this frontier analogy, Chapter 3 explores the grouping of evolution trails of embryology in connection with both instrumental developments in bioscience (eg. micropipette) and the transformation of hand-crafted bio-products into instruments for bioscience (eg. embryonic stem cell). Chapter 7 clarifies the often chaotic routes to progress in IVF in the context of the development of tools for bioscience, including ‘human embryo tools’ (268). Furthermore, Franklin draws on Gina Glover’s famous art works of reproductive technology to illustrate the ambiguous ‘frontier’ of three phenomena vis-à-vis human–tool relationships in embryology: (1) the significance of the new kind of blood/genetic relative making through IVF, eg. egg donor; (2) the contextualisation of actual ambivalent experiences in IVF, eg. the high failure rate compared with each couple’s high expectation of pregnancy; and (3) the enhancement of technology through the biological gaze, eg. microscopic views of the chromosome. This mobilisation of the frontier idiom makes it possible, I suggest here, not only to explore the complexity of history and contemporary conditions of IVF, but also to couple Marxist’s concept of linear historical materialism, focusing upon human–tool relationships and their impact on social change and evolution, with Foucault’s genealogical approach, seeing history as a ‘complex course of descent’, namely, the entangled and various historical routes to each event.Footnote 1
In the third section of the book, Chapters 4–6, Franklin focuses upon an historical analysis of IVF, with reference to gender and kinship. Taking into account feminist anthropologists’ studies on gender and kinship, Chapter 4 reconsiders Lévi-Strauss’ famous anthropological model of kinship based upon biological determination. Franklin shows that feminists have treated IVF as a key to refute the biological determinism in mechanisms of kinship, noting that IVF can redefine the meanings of biological ties through varied biological roles such as sperm donor and gestational mother. The chapter, more specifically, shows how IVF can culturally reshape the meaning of blood relationships and kin in a society so that both gender and kinship go beyond the dyad of nature/culture and instead interplay in a continuous and interwoven process. Drawing upon this intriguing argument, Chapter 5 explores the history of feminist debates over new reproductive technologies from the 1980s up to today. It brings to light feminists’ ambivalence towards IVF by illustrating the latter’s capability to re-construct patriarchal gender and kinship concepts and its possibility of reproducing them. Chapter 6 examines the dynamics of gender politics vis-à-vis the female experience of IVF, such as pressure from in-laws or relatives for a couple to produce offspring; it then moves on to explain the significance of the progress in the visualisation of reproductive substances (eg. ova) and processes (eg. fertilisation) for both biologists and couples undergoing IVF. In this analysis, Franklin juxtaposes the Marxist notion of history in terms of human and tool relationships, eg. a human skilfully handling an embryo through both handled instruments and apparatus of visualisation, eg. cameras, with feminist theories of politics over gender identities, eg. the stigma of infertility in terms of the ideal nuclear family model. The third section of this work, therefore, not only shows that gender and kinship can be seen as technologies to organise human behaviour, but also argues that these technologies have worked for IVF practices and have been reshaped through the IVF process.
In mapping out these points, Biological Relatives successfully synthesises different historical approaches and contributes to our understanding of historical methodology. Without taking explicit credit, Franklin is able to overcome the conflict between Foucault and Marx: Foucault criticised Marxists’ historical theory for putting forward the idea of linear progress toward revolution and sought instead to show that history is full of contingencies and hybridities.Footnote 2 Franklin utilises Marxist historical dynamics but incorporates these into a more Foucauldian genealogical approach. Similarly, her application of feminist theories fills a gap in the relatively patriarchal historical views of both Marx and Foucault, which ignored issues of gender politics.
Biological Relatives goes far beyond earlier studies to provide new and valuable insight into the history of IVF. These include new perspectives on both complex evolutionary processes of biology and the overall historical descriptions about feminist debates over IVF in connection with the notion of kinship and women’s actual voices. Finally, Franklin successfully cultivates a novel and constructive account of the dynamics, complexity and hybridity in the history of IVF in connection with related science fields and social and cultural areas. This methodology will, no doubt, encourage scholars in history, sociology and the anthropology of medicine to explore the development of medicine through inter-disciplinary methodologies.
