The Elusive Embryo by Gay Becker, University of California Press,
£28.50, ISBN 0520224302
ARE IVF and other technologies that help women to conceive changing the very
nature of parenthood and family life? Well, no, says Gay Becker, professor of
medical anthropology at the University of California in San Francisco. In
practice, reproductive technologies end up reinforcing the status quo.
Many American men and women who benefit from these techniques see themselves
as consumers, eager to buy a solution to their fertility problem in the medical
marketplace, says Becker in The Elusive Embryo. The success stories are
mostly white, middle-class…
