Book takes critical look at assisted reproduction industry

New Delhi, Aug 21 (PTI) The assisted reproduction industrymay have brought smiles to the faces to many a childlesscouple but there is a huge risk of genetic thefts, human andova trafficking and hyper-medicalisation affecting the woman,warns a new book. In ‘Politics Of The Womb: The Perils of IVF, Surrogacy &Modified Babies’, author Pinki Virani presents a completepicture of what is sold to desperately wanting-to-be parentsas miraculous medico-technology. The book, published by Penguin Random House, states thefactual failure rates of IVF and other reproductivetechniques, points to the futility of such artificialassistance if a father passes on his genetic infertility tohis IVF-child, and uncovers the ‘IVF package’ which becomesthe woman and her unborn, through which a newly born baby isdenied colostrum – its fundamental foremost-hour feed – frombreastmilk. It also tracks the death of commercial surrogates; theemotional exploitativeness of female egg-freezing; thedestruction of humaneness around "donations" of sperm and ova;the genetic thefts; the rampant human and ova trafficking; themoral compass-lost procedures behind "designer offspring"; andthe very real risk of broken babies and breaking mothers,according to the publishers. According to Virani, who has previously authored bookslike ‘Bitter Chocolate: Child Sexual Abuse in India’, ‘OnceWas Bombay’, ‘Aruna’s Story: The True Story Of A Rape and ItsAftermath’ and ‘Deaf Heaven’, poverty is not the sole reasonwhy young women are selling their eggs, easy-money is. "Easier, at any rate, than renting out their vulvae ascall girls; more discreet, taking comparatively much lesstime, than renting out their uterus as commercial surrogates.College-going girls are doing it for the ‘extra cash’ as areaspiring starlets and models; young women studying to bedoctors, lawyers, engineers, air hostesses, these are the divadonors. It’s all done under-the-radar…" She claims infertile women availing of IVF are "stimulatedwith high doses of synthesised hormones to produce a largernumber of eggs for harvesting for their own embryos. "Egg-selling women are sought out – by the agents, some ofwhom were once sellers themselves – because they are fertile;proof of this tends to be glossed over in medically mysteriousways since not all oocyte sellers have children of their own."MORE PTI ZMNANS