The Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) industry was created to help infertile couples conceive children. About 11% of American couples are infertile and about 1% of all births require ART. With California leading the way in this $4 billion/year industry, there were about 331,000 ART cycles performed at 489 fertility clinics last year, resulting in about 74,000 live born infants. This private, self-regulated industry offers couples a variety of ART techniques including in vitro fertilization, embryo transfer, gamete intra-fallopian transfer and artificial insemination. Fertility clinics sell the eggs, sperm and expertise needed to treat couples with infertility conditions. Many of these clinics now offer gender determination services where a couple may select the sex of their child. Rapid advances in genetic technology may one day soon give parents the option of modifying their unborn children to protect them from acquired or inherited diseases.

Supporters claim this technology could also conceivably be used to make children tall, muscled, blue eyed, intelligent or possess any other trait a parent may consider desirable. Opponents claim it is unethical to remove, implant or alter the genes of an unborn human being, saying such efforts revisit the Nazi specter of eugenics which held that selective breeding could improve the human race. They claim there is no way to test this technology without endangering and sacrificing many lives, since the degree of success of such procedures often can’t be assessed until the subjects grow and age.

Proposed Legislation: Reintroduction of H.R.2164 - Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2012 (113th Congress 2013-2014)
Prospective Sponsor: Rep. Andy Harris (MD)