Today it was announced that Robert G. Edwards, the co-developer of in-vitro fertilization, was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine. Which gives us an opportunity to see what folks were saying when Louise Brown, the first "test-tube baby," was born in 1978. Witness this article from Time magazine (which began, of course, with a quote from Aldous Huxley's Brave New World):
Other researchers were far more skeptical of going beyond in-vitro fertilization to the actual implantation of the developing embryo in the uterus. "The potential for misadventure is unlimited," said Dr. John Marshall, head of obstetrics and gynecology at Los Angeles County's Harbor General Hospital. How sure could anyone be that the Browns' baby will not be deformed, he asked. "What if we got an otherwise perfectly formed individual that was a cyclops? Who is responsible? The parents? The doctor? Is the government obligated to take care of it?"
Fortunately, Louise was born with a full complement of eyes, placed on either side of her face, and the epidemic of cyclops babies never came to pass. And today, virtually no one debates the ethics of in-vitro fertilization. What was an alarming development 32 years ago is now rather ordinary and unremarkable. Just something to consider when we begin arguing about whether cloning super-soldiers is a good idea or not.
-- Paul Waldman
