"Eye Hoop They All Have Babies"

Every industrial convention has its own eccentric flavor, and the 2005 gathering of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine was no exception. That year the annual meeting of American fertility doctors was held in conjunction with the annual meeting of Canadian fertility doctors; the massive conference, which took place in Montreal over five days in October, was attended by emissaries from North America as well as from England, France, Europe, Japan, China, Africa, India, Asia, Israel: anywhere that humans live and wish, as humans usually do, to be fruitful and multiply. So numerous were the babymakers that airport immigration was bogged down and the city's downtown was transformed; the hospitality rooms of the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth were booked for events like "Cocktails with the Middle East Fertility Society." Converging on the downtown convention center, reproductive endocrinologists, embryologists, andrologists, urologists, therapists, and psychologists attended courses in packed seminar rooms. But the real action was in the cavernous exhibition hall, where an array of twenty-first century conception technology was on display, rivaling anything unveiled by the military-industrial complex.

At the entrance to the hall, unavoidable to all who entered, was a booth maintained by Scandinavian Cryobank, a subsidiary of Cryos, one of the world's largest sperm banks. As one might expect, Scandinavian Cryobank specializes in Scandinavian sperm donors: specifically Danish donors enrolled in graduate programs at "major Scandinavian universities," men so mentally and physically superior that they passed "some of the most exacting genetic testing in the industry." Deliberately recalling another era when northern European men inflicted their genes on women of other nations, sales staff were distributing wry little buttons announcing "Congratulations! It's a Viking!" underneath which was a photo of a very blond, very sturdy-looking baby. A banner advertisement noted that the company caters to gay and straight, black and white, male and female. Under the happy we-are-the-world tableau of patients, it added that it serves patients "as energetically as our ancestors once grabbed countries."

Not far away, one of the other principal players in the realm of international genetic redistribution, Los Angeles-based California Cryobank, was advertising its sperm bank by means of an indoor hockey game. It was not clear what hockey was supposed to symbolize. Maybe it was an homage to Canada. Maybe it was supposed to underscore the importance, in this crowd, of being deft and competent enough to shoot a small, frenetically moving object into a stationary target. No matter: setting down the espressos and Belgian chocolates that were being freely dispensed, the medical men and women lined up to whack away at the puck, cheering whenever a colleague, you know, scored.

Nearby, Cryogenic Laboratories was hoping to edge out this competition by offering a service called Lifetime Photos. For a price, clients can obtain photos of a sperm donor, from infancy to adulthood, and thereby see how their child's own appearance might unfold if they select that donor's genetic product to conceive their baby.

The conference was dominated and underwritten by the pharmaceutical industry. Standing everywhere were cheerful representatives from Ferring Pharmaceuticals, Organon USA, Serono Inc., Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, and others, who together do an estimated $3 billion a year business selling the drugs and medical devices that are an integral part of childbearing through assisted reproduction technology (ART). By now, ART comprises a spectrum of...

 

 

"A stimulating, illuminating look at the booming baby-making business and the knotty questions it raises."

 

"Mundy covers all bases, seamlessly merging scientific fact, real-life experiences, and philosophical implications. . . . [She] applies prodigious journalistic and research skills to a topic as compelling and timely as assisted reproduction, and the result is a one-night read."

 

"Everything Conceivable may be the best title of the year. And for those curious, it is an irresistible dispatch from the far frontier of parenthood."

 

"A much-needed investigation into assisted reproductive technology. . . . [Mundy] illuminates domestic life and politics in contemporary America."

 

"Journalist Mundy proves herself a clear-eyed observer of these procedures and their cultural implications, with an unexpectedly easy style and sharp wit."

 

"Mundy, a reporter for The Washington Post, tells her tales in a fresh voice and with a keen eye for detail."

 

"Mundy has compiled an exhaustive and at times heartbreaking survey of the issues raised by the new-fangled science of creating babies. . . . And while Mundy does an excellent job of rendering a lot of very technical information accessible . . . what makes the book compelling are the people she writes about. . . . Such details humanize the ethical questions that dog scientific advances, and Mundy's skill at choosing her subjects makes for an emotionally exhausting book. Yet those same details, and that same discomfort, make for an unusually edifying read."

 

"Everything Conceivable is an earthquake of a book."

 

"Everything Conceivable is an enthralling tour through Fertility World. . . . Liza Mundy is the ideal tour guide to this remarkable land. She's curious, funny, incisive, and deeply sympathetic to the terribly difficult decisions that would-be parents face. All that you want to know about modern baby-making-from scientific gambles to wild-west law to gripping human drama-you will find in Everything Conceivable."

 

"Making babies has become a big business in the United States, and Liza Mundy is there at the bedside, monitoring the rise of assisted reproductive technology. Mundy expertly tracks the fascinating scientific developments. But the real marvel of her book is her empathetic scrutiny of the human dramas and dilemmas those advances have brought with them. Everything Conceivable is a pioneering portrait of an industry that has, for better and for worse, altered our ideas of biology, family, destiny."

 

"Beautifully written, unfailingly smart, Everything Conceivable is a marvelous book. Mundy's empathy for people struggling to have children is palpable, but so is her keen astonishment at some of the brave new ways science has devised of helping them. This is a book full of unforgettable stories about human beings facing personal, ethical, and moral dilemmas we could scarcely have imagined a generation ago."

 

Liza Mundy received her A.B. degree from Princeton University and an M.A. at the University of Virginia. She is a feature writer at The Washington Post Magazine and her work was selected by Oliver Sacks for inclusion in The Best American Science Writing 2003. She has won awards from the Sunday Magazine Editors Association, among others. She lives in Arlington, Virginia, with her husband and two children.


From the Hardcover edition.

 

Everything Conceivable by Liza Mundy
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