Mad science and the family
THIS WAS the summer of reproductive science horror shows. First there was the weirdly popular and obscenely public Jon and Kate sextuplet train wreck. Then there was the “Octo-mom’s’’ breeding extravaganza and predictable media circus. And finally the bizarre custody battle over Michael Jackson’s children, featuring various sperm donor suspects, an egg donor, and a scheming biological mom. All three stories had, at base, a kind of egotism and touch of mad science. And all three offered distorted visions of our new technological capacity to create life.
This was back-to-school week, and all across the nation children my daughter’s age are starting kindergarten. Among my daughters’ peer group are children of sperm donors - both known and anonymous, egg donors, surrogate mothers, and many sets of twins.
No matter which prism you are looking through - US Weekly or the PTA meeting at a local elementary school - it seems natural to wonder how these breakthrough tools might change our concept of “family.’’
We are well into the era of human beings as creators - not just as procreators, but craftsmen, skilled at engineering not only the particulars of our own lives but the beginnings of new ones. Biochemists have figured out how to fuse the genes of one species into another - we craft cows and goats that can express pharmaceutical-grade proteins in their milk, and mice that replicate human cancer cells.
This could be the beginning of a revolution: We have the technology to become a world of Michael Jacksons, crafting little disciples from various combinations of genetic material, or a nation of Jon and Kates (Why have only one baby when you could have six?). We could create baby farms or clone colonies as sci-fi movies and books have envisioned for years.
But the remarkable thing is that by and large, unlike Jon and Kate or Michael Jackson or Nadya Suleman, we are sticking to the old forms of parenting and family. The vast majority of children who are the products of assisted reproduction are still “singletons,’’ in hospital parlance, and are born into nuclear families with two parents, whether they are biologically connected to the child or not, whether they are a man and a woman or of the same sex.
Over the next years, as the children of more and more sperm and egg donors and surrogate mothers come of age, there will be new questions for our society and our legal system to answer: What constitutes “maternity’’ and “paternity’’ in an age when biology is just one kind of connection a mother or father can have with their child? What are the rights of sperm and egg donors if they change their minds about how involved, or not involved, they want to be in the life of their biological child? Is there a different name for biological and non-biological siblings? Do we need one?
We have the capacity to engineer so much about how we live and how we further the life of our species. But even as science gives us more independence from biological constraints and genetic connection becomes less integral to the definition of family, we continue to value the time-tested form. Above the tawdry intrigue surrounding Prince Michael’s provenance, our desire for traditional family units seems unchanged. Which is probably biological.
Jessica Shattuck’s new novel is “Perfect Life.’’ 