https://doi.org/10.4081/mem.1997.881
Against heterologous human fertilization
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
Authors
The process of the progressive acceptance of heterologous human "in vitro" fertilization may encourage its opposers to abandon their position, acknowledge its essential uselessness and accept the principle according to which the products of progress should be available to anyone who wishes to use them.
On the other hand the author believes that there are defects in artificial fertilization as a whole, not only in heterologous fertilization with its problems. Those involved are now attempting to hide these defects but they will soon undermine the certainties which up to now have been presented in the usual terms of biomedical triumphalism.
In fact, artificial fertilization raises many scientific and ethical problems: the nature of heterologous fertilization treatment, risks for the mother and fetus, anonimity for the donor and risks of eugenetic selection as a consequence of the progress of molecular genetics, the children's rights, cryopreservation of the spare embryos and the hypothesis of "embryo donation".
Today it is not possible to foresee the future of artificial fertilization and particularly heterologous fertilization. Nonetheless, the author expects that it will soon disappear because of the increasingly complicated problems involved.
There has to be the maximum desire for a child and in fact the biological laws inspire this powerful desire, but heterologous fertilization with an anonymous father is not the answer to these hopes. There are other paths.
How to Cite
PAGEPress has chosen to apply the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0) to all manuscripts to be published.
An Open Access Publication is one that meets the following two conditions:
- the author(s) and copyright holder(s) grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship, as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use.
- a complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in a suitable standard electronic format is deposited immediately upon initial publication in at least one online repository that is supported by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.