Book Review: Biomedical Innovation in Fertility Care – Evidence challenges, commercialisation and the market for hope
By Zeenat Beebeejaun,
PET
| 10. 28. 2024
Building on the 2016 BBC Panorama documentary 'Inside Britain's Fertility Business', which exposed the use of controversial fertility treatment add-ons in private fertility clinics (see BioNews 880), Manuela Perrotta's book, Biomedical Innovation in Fertility Care, unveils regulatory inadequacies that expose patients to abuse by the profit-driven medical industry. Perrotta makes a case for more ethical biomedical innovation in this book and proposes changes that put patients' interests and moral behaviour ahead of business interests.
In doing so, Perrotta explores the commercialisation of reproductive therapies, concentrating on the moral, practical, and legal problems that both experts and patients must deal with. The book criticises the marketing of reproductive treatment add-ons like EmbryoGlue and time-lapse imaging, which are portrayed as potential therapies for supporting pregnancies notwithstanding the lack of solid data proving their efficacy clinics (see BioNews 1240). This system presents serious ethical issues, especially when patients are asked to pay exorbitant costs for experimental procedures.
While reading the book, I found myself reflecting on how Perrotta highlights the restricted role of regulating authorities such as the Competition and...
Related Articles
Since the “CRISPR babies” scandal in 2018, no additional genetically modified babies are known to have been born. Now several techno-enthusiastic billionaires are setting up privately funded companies to genetically edit human embryos, with the explicit intention of creating genetically modified children.
Heritable genome editing remains prohibited by policies in the overwhelming majority of countries that have any relevant policy, and by a binding European treaty. Support for keeping it legally off limits is widespread, including among scientists...
By Ed Cara, Gizmodo | 06.22.2025
In late May, several scientific organizations, including the International Society for Cell and Gene Therapy (ISCT), banded together to call for a 10-year moratorium on using CRISPR and related technologies to pursue human heritable germline editing. The declaration also outlined...
By Elise Kinsella, ABC News | 06.15.2025
When *Sarah and her partner needed fertility testing, it was Monash IVF that the pair turned to.
"Having a quick browse online, Monash IVF was one of the most prominent ones that came up on Google search and after contacting...
By Tory Shepherd, The Guardian | 06.13.2025
IVF is “big business” and experts are concerned about conflicts of interest between profit-making and helping families have children.
Monash IVF’s second embryo bungle has sparked renewed scrutiny on the IVF industry as a whole amid calls for national regulation...