California's fertility flap and the future of reproductive tech
Regulators must avoid knee-jerk reactions to the case of the octuplets born to a mother who reportedly already had six kids, writes TechNewsWorld columnist Sonia Arrison. Such a case is an extreme anomaly, and placing too many restrictive rules on reproductive technologies will hamper innovations meant to promote healthier families.
The news of octuplets born recently near Los Angeles shocked many people, especially since the mother, Nadya Suleman, apparently already had six children and is reported to be jobless and living with her parents. Such rare stories certainly sell newspapers, but they can also lead to knee-jerk calls for overly restrictive regulation, which threaten freedom and innovation.
Already, comment boards and blogs around the Web are rife with calls for greater government oversight of the reproductive technology field. Yet Nadya Suleman's story is atypical and obscures the great strides being made in assisted reproduction due to the reality that the field is relatively free from bureaucratic interference. An international comparison illustrates this point.
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