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Rating: 
Summary: Scarier than any horror movie!
Review: Did you know that a doctor can take a sample of your tissues, isolate some factor and then SELL it to drug companies for big bucks without asking your permission or paying you a dime?I didn't, until I read this book. What about the profits that gene researchers are making by patenting YOUR genes? Or about the undisclosed financial interest that regulators have in allowing such patents to proceed. It's all in here and it makes for some very scary reading. While most of us weren't looking, that portion of the medical community motivated primarily by greed has ventured into some very odd territory. The repercussions may make medicine even more expensive to the consumer at the same time as it makes health insurance even more unattainable. In a world where medical mistakes already cost more lives each year than Cancer or AIDS, we cannot afford to trust our doctors to watch out for our best interests. This book makes it painfully clear the extent to which profit, rather than care for patients drives genetic and reproductive medicine. A MUST read.
Rating: 
Summary: Not what I expected - too bad!
Review: I am a medical student and a law student. We read this book in a 1-week special course and I was very disappointed. Every case from the newspapers and talk shows is in here, but with no legal or medical insight: it's all "Tsk, tsk" and "please ban." A high school kid could've written.
Rating: 
Summary: a lot to think about
Review: I have no medical or legal background, but consider myself to be quite well-read and thus to have a good basic understanding of med/legal issues. I found "The Clone Age" raised issues on nearly every page that I had not previously considered. These issues, I feel, are ones that now, or will, impact myself, my community, my society. This book was very enlightening of numerous issues that are my responsibility to consider, evaluate, judge. I think this book is very important reading for thoughtful people.
Rating:
Summary: superb
Review: I think is one of the best b ooks (in the field) that I ever read. (How could I get in touch with L.B.A ?
Rating:
Summary: superb
Review: I think is one of the best b ooks (in the field) that I ever read. (How could I get in touch with L.B.A ?
Rating:
Summary: A must-read for anyone who's ever been an embryo
Review: Lori B. Andrews, the foremost expert on legal issues related to reproductive matters, has written what must be one of the most important books ever to address the fundamental building blocks of all human life. Anyone who cares deeply about any issue surrounding in vitro fertilization, cloning, sperm donors, the use of body tissue by science and the ethics related to these matter must read this book. In clear, exciting, entertaining and occasionally very humorous language, Andrews gives frightening details of the latest breakthroughs in research technology. Here's are just a few of the many provocative topics introduced: did you know that technology exists for harvesting eggs from human female fetuses? That it's technically possible to abort a girl child, but use it's eggs to create another human being at a later date? That sperm has been frequently 'harvested' from dead men? Or the fact that, although cloned animals often have severe defects, this procedure is being pushed forward in different places around the world? And government oversight of radical new reproductive technology is practically non-existent, while other medical procedures are always exposed to extreme scrutiny. Read this book! You'll never read another story about human reproduction or cloning the same way again.
Rating:
Summary: A courageous memoir that should be required reading
Review: Would you want to be cloned...with or without your consent? "The Clone Age" by lawyer/author Lori B. Andrews examines controversies inside the 2 billion dollar a year fertility industry. Some of the revelations might be topics for tv talk shows..a Chinese scientist who fertilized a female chimp with human sperm to try to create a super-ape, an IVF clinic in the Netherlands that accidentally mixed sperm of two men together, resulting in twins of different races, eggs and sperm for sale on the internet, artificial wombs in Japan, children being born from dead donors, fertility labs ofering "genetically enhanced" babies, ads for brainy college girls to "donate" eggs at $35,000 an egg or up and the most chilling, a patient whose blood and cells were marketed to the biotech industry without his knowledge or consent. The abuses seem endless. Andrews, once a champion of reproductive rights, seems to feel responsible for this sorry state of affairs. In her book, she apologizes for her role in having made reproductive technologists "invincible" and like a congregant in a confession box, offers to make amends by calling for a ban on cloning. She writes: "Facing human cloning was like greeting the Frankenstein monster for the first time. The creation had gone amok. I needed to draw the line here to atone." Nothing startling is offered in the surrogacy chapter, offensively titled, "Wombs for Rent." Andrews does acknowledge surrogacy's high success rate saying, "While 75% of the biological mothers who give up a child for adoption later change their minds, only around 1% of the surrogates have similar changes of heart." (The actual figure, from court files, is 1/4 of 1%). And though Andrews still seems to support compensation for surrogates, she worries that they might be tempted to carry multiples for twice or three times their usual fee. However, no evidence is offered that such a deal has ever been struck. The surrogacy chapter draws heavily from Between Strangers, an earlier work about the role of politics in shaping public policy against surrogacy in New York, Michigan and other states. The Baby M case is revisited as well as several other controversial court cases involving a (dead)lawyer, Noel Keane. Two California parentage disputes are also examined. Who should be the mother in these cases? In previous books, Andrews favored the intended parents. In "The Clone Age," however, her position is not so clear. While acknowledging that letting surrogates change their mind can place a baby in legal limbo for years to come, she says only: "State legislatures need to provide protections for all the participants in surrogate mother arrangements." Later in the book, Andrews gives law professor, Arthur Caplan, space to recite his favorite disaster story about a Keane client in Pennsylvania who beat his newborn to death. Caplan asks: "If that hasn't prompted regulation, what will?" However, Caplan still doesn't seem to understand this was a homocide case, not a custody dispute. Though she raises compelling questions about where our society is going with reproductive technology, Andrews winds up throwing the baby out with the bath water by suggesting that the U.S. might want to debate the introduction of new technologies by modelling after the Royal Commission on Reproductive and Genetic Technologies in Canada. That group spent 2 years and the equivalent of 22 million dollars to conclude that a number of technologies (paid surrogacy included) should be banned. According to Andrews, the report reflected Canada's "shared cultural values." However, the issue may have more to do with saving Canada's health care system money. According to press reports, the Royal Commission (appointed by the Health Minister) had as its head Dr. Patricia Baird, a critic of surrogacy and other technol- ogies. According to the reports, Baird fired five members of her own committee for "challenging her authority." With all due respect to Lori, who I have worked with in the past, do we here in the U.S. really want to model a debate on reproduction after a country whose "shared values" wouldn't allow paid surrogacy and other technologies but allows the clubbing of baby seals for commercial purposes? I don't know about you but if I had to choose, I'd rather be cloned than clubbed.
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