Postponed: Author's Night - "Designing Babies: How Technology is Changing the Ways We Create Children"

ABOUT THE BOOK

Since the first "test tube baby" was born over 40 years ago, In Vitro Fertilization and other Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) have advanced in extraordinary ways, producing millions of babies. The possibilities of this rapidly developing technology are astounding--especially in the United States. As these possibilities are increasingly realized, physicians in many specialties, from OB/GYN and pediatrics to genetics, internal medicine and psychiatry, along with potential parents and policymakers, face complex and critical questions about the use--or possible misuse--of ARTs. Designing Babies: How Technology is Changing the Ways We Create Children confronts these questions, examining the medical, ethical, social, and policy concerns surrounding reproductive technologies. Based on in-depth interviews with providers and patients, Robert Klitzman explores how physicians and patients are facing quandaries of whether, when, and how to use ARTs. He articulates the full range of these crucial issues, from the economic pressures patients face to the moral and social challenges encountered in making decisions

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robert Klitzman, MD, is a professor of psychiatry at the College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Joseph Mailman School of Public Health, and the director of the online and in-person Bioethics Masters and Certificate Programs at Columbia University. He has written over 140 scientific journal articles, nine books, and numerous chapters on critical issues in bioethics regarding genetics, neuroscience, doctor-patient relationships and other areas. His books include The Ethics Police?: The Struggle to Make Human Research Safe, Am I My Genes? Confronting Fate and Family Secrets in the Age of Genetic Testing, When Doctors Become Patients, A Year-Long Night: Tales of a Medical Internship, In a House of Dreams and Glass: Becoming a Psychiatrist, Being Positive: The Lives of Men and Women With HIV, The Trembling Mountain: A Personal Account of Kuru, Cannibals and Mad Cow Disease, Mortal Secrets: Truth and Lies in the Age of AIDS, and most recently, Designing Babies: How Technology is Changing How We Have Children. Klitzman has received numerous awards for his work, including fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Commonwealth Fund, the Aaron Diamond Foundation, the Hastings Center and the Rockefeller Foundation. He is a member of the Empire State Stem Cell Commission, and the Ethics Working Group of the HIV Prevention Trials Network, and served on the U.S. Department of Defense’s Research Ethics Advisory Panel. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a regular contributor to The New York Times and CNN.