Stanford panel on reproductive technologies to follow play by inventor of 'the pill'
BY BRUCE GOLDMAN
A Feb. 12 panel discussion will address the societal implications of technologically assisted reproduction. The discussion, sponsored by the Stanford University School of Medicine, will immediately follow a matinee performance of an edgy play by Carl Djerassi, PhD, inventor of the birth control pill and a professor emeritus of chemistry at Stanford.
While Djerassi is best known for his pioneering research and entrepreneurship that gave rise to “the pill,” he has also, in the past decade or so, written several novels and plays whose plots often revolve around the disruptive aspects of new technologies.
Djerassi’s latest play, Taboos: When Harriet Met Sally, will be performed in Cubberley Auditorium on Stanford’s campus Feb. 10-12. Without giving away too many plot details, suffice it to say that this comic drama explores the capacity of assisted reproduction technologies — including in vitro fertilization, egg donation, gender selection and more — to blur not only gender roles but also the very definition of the word “parent.”
The advent of the sperm donor, the gestational carrier (a woman who agrees to carry the child in utero, in exchange for compensation) and cryogenic technologies that allow for the long-term storage of eggs and sperm confound age-old concepts of family structure. What does it mean that a woman, at age 80, could become the mother of her own biological offspring? If a woman is artificially impregnated by her brother-in-law’s sperm, is he then the child’s uncle or father? In a time when sexuality and reproduction are becoming decoupled, what does “normal” mean?
After the 2 p.m. matinee performance of Taboos on Feb. 12, four panelists will offer their informed yet conflicting perspectives on the potentials of in vitro fertilization and associated procedures, their disruptive effects and the limits that ought to be placed on them. The panelists are:
- Melanie Thernstrom, a prolific writer and the author of a bestselling book on living with chronic pain, who after undergoing several unsuccessful rounds of IVF found an egg donor and two gestational carriers and is now the legal mother of two 15-month-old babies whom she calls “twiblings” in a recent article about them in the New York Times Magazine.
- Valerie Baker, MD, medical director of the Stanford Fertility and Reproductive Medicine Center IVF and Reproductive Endocrinology Program and research-committee chair of the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology, a national professional organization.
- William Hurlbut, MD, physician and consulting professor of neurology and neurological sciences and, from 2002 to 2009, a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics, which in 2004 produced the position paper, "Reproduction and Responsibility: The Regulation of New Biotechnologies."
- Hank Greely, JD, the Deane F. and Kate Edelman Johnson Professor of Law, director of the Stanford Center for Law and the Biosciences and steering-committee chair of the Stanford University Center for Biomedical Ethics.
The panel will be moderated by Bruce Goldman, a science writer in the medical school’s Office of Communication & Public Affairs whose articles on the subject of reproductive technologies have appeared in Nature, the Los Angeles Times and other publications.
Tickets for the performance are by general admission and cost $25, or $20 for seniors. Those interested in acquiring tickets can phone Stanford Tickets at (650) 725-2787 or visit http://www.stanford.edu/group/tickets/index.html. (Stanford students can get free tickets at the Stanford Ticket Office in Tresidder.)
- PRINT MEDIA CONTACT
- Bruce Goldman | Tel (650) 725-2106
- BROADCAST MEDIA CONTACT
- M.A. Malone | Tel (650) 723-6912
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