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Free Informed Consent and in Vitro Fertilization

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Making Babies: Biomedical Technologies, Reproductive Ethics, and Public Policy

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Abstract

In 1978, when Lesley Brown gave birth to the first baby born though IVF, she did not know she would be the first such mother. She thought there were many others. Doctors Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe did not inform her that she was participating in an experiment.1 In 1995, Ricardo Asch, an internationally acclaimed fertility specialist, and some of his colleagues at the University of California, Irvine, were accused of performing research without the consent of patients, prescribing unapproved drugs, and taking eggs and embryos from some patients without the donors’ knowledge.2

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  1. St. Mary’s University, San Antonio, Texas, USA

    Inmaculada de Melo-Martín

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de Melo-Martín, I. (1998). Free Informed Consent and in Vitro Fertilization. In: Making Babies: Biomedical Technologies, Reproductive Ethics, and Public Policy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2159-2_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2159-2_6

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-90-481-5042-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-017-2159-2

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