The End of Sex and the Future of Human Reproduction
Henry “Hank” T. Greely
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About the Book
The End of Sex and the Future of Human Reproduction is a thought experiment that contemplates a future in which humans (likely first in developed countries) cease having sex for the purpose of reproduction. Instead, using biotechnologies that exist (at least nascently) today and are rapidly improving in predictive ability and decreasing in cost, prospective parents could engage in preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) and in vitro fertilization (IVF), making sexless reproduction not just possible but cheap and easy—what Greely coins “easy PGD.” Parents would be told as much as they wish to know about the genetic makeup of dozens of embryos and then select one or two for implantation, gestation, and birth.
With a primer on reproduction and genetics that opens the book, Dr. Greely examines the past as he looks to the future and also explores the potential legal, ethical, and social consequences of a possible 21st-century approach to human reproduction.
About the Author
Henry “Hank” T. Greely, J.D., is the Deane F. and Kate Edelman Johnson Professor of Law and Professor, by courtesy, of Genetics at Stanford University. He specializes in ethical, legal, and social issues arising from advances in the biosciences, particularly genetics, neuroscience, and human stem cell research. He directs the Stanford Center for Law and the Biosciences and the Stanford Program in Neuroscience and Society, and he chairs the California Advisory Committee on Human Stem Cell Research and the steering committee of the Stanford University Center for Biomedical Ethics. He serves as a member of the NAS Committee on Science, Technology, and Law; the NIGMS Advisory Council, the Institute of Medicine’s Neuroscience Forum, and the NIH Multi-Center Working Group on the BRAIN Initiative.
Professor Greely graduated from Stanford in 1974 and from Yale Law School in 1977. He served as a law clerk for Judge John Minor Wisdom on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and for Justice Potter Stewart of the United States Supreme Court. He began teaching at Stanford in 1985.
