States aren't Eager to Regulate Fertility Industry

The Utah Legislature took a step last week into territory where state lawmakers rarely tread.

It passed a law giving children conceived via sperm donation access to the medical histories of their biological fathers. The law itself stirred no controversy. The oddity was that the legislature ventured into the area of "assisted reproduction" at all.

Assisted reproductive technology (ART) helps infertile couples to conceive. Compared to many other industrialized nations, neither the U.S. nor state governments do much to oversee the multibillion-dollar industry.

"The United States is the Wild West of the fertility industry," Marcy Darnovsky, executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society said, echoing a description used by many critics of the regulatory environment surrounding ART.

The federal government requires laboratories engaged in assisted reproduction to be certified by organizations, such as the American College of Pathologists, and to report certain data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (One exception to minimal federal intervention: President George W. Bush's ban in 2001 on the use of newly created embryonic stem cell lines in...