Probes the many questions raised by surrogate motherhood, including the medical, legal, and emotional implications, and explores the challenge surrogacy poses to traditional beliefs about motherhood

Between Strangers: Surrogate Mothers, Expectant Fathers, and Brave New Babies

Politics & Social Sciences

Andrews, Lori

Social Sciences

Harpercollins

Genetic technologies have moved off the pages of science fiction and into our everyday lives. Internists now offer genetic testing for cancers and early coronary disease. Obstetricians make genetic predictions during pregnancy about a baby's future health. Even dentists are getting into the act, offering testing for a genetic propensity to peridontal disease. In this pathbreaking book, Lori Andrews provides the first detailed glimpse into how genetic testing can change your self-image, your relationships with loved ones, and your expectations about your children. She documents how ill prepared doctors are to deal with complex genetic issues. Andrews also uncovers the ways in which employers, insurers, schools, and courts have discriminated against people on the basis of their genetic make up. She traces the legal case history of genetics litigation and legislation and describes the ethical and social protections that need to be in place so that the Human Genome Project does not lead us directly toward Brave New World. In Future Perfect, Lori Andrews offers a new plan for making decisions as individuals and as a society based on emerging issues of ethics and science. Who should have access to your personal genetic information? Should genetic treatments be used to enhance characteristics such as intelligence in "normal" individuals? Should gene therapy be undertaken on embryos, changing their genetic inheritance, as well as that of future generations? If a woman learns she has a genetic mutation predisposing her to breast cancer, does she have a moral or even a legal duty to share that information with an estranged relative? Andrews considers the answer to these and many other questions that have profound implications for health care providers, medical organizations, social institutions, legislatures, courts, and ordinary people.

Future Perfect

Philosophy

Columbia University Press

Dr. Alexandra Blake has the job of a lifetime. As a cutting-edge geneticist at AFIP---the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, D.C.---Alex is charged with using her research into the genetics of viruses to find a vaccine against bioterrorism. The AFIP contains the pathology lab for the Department of Defense, manages the DOD blood bank, directs research like Alex's, and fosters the development of inventions to help the nation's armed forces. But the institute's new director, James Wiatt, wants to turn the AFIP into a mini FBI by directing its resources toward crime solving---an effort to rival the Bureau's forensic department. When a series of related murders falls under his jurisdiction, he gets his chance to prove the AFIP can compete with the Bureau. Alex is forced to put her research on hold so she can cover forensics on the case, which involves a killer who murders women near military bases across the country and then tattoos their corpses. At first she resents being distracted from her lab work, but as she becomes immersed in the case, studying the forensic evidence, viewing the crime scenes, and piecing together the victims' last moments, Alex resolves to catch the killer. She knows it's only a matter of time before he leaves some evidence for Alex to trace back to him. But when another murder strikes closer to home for Alex and her colleagues---and her boyfriend, a congressman from Texas---it will take more than forensic science to keep them safe. With its spellbinding mix of suspense, forensics, and romance, Lori Andrews's debut novel signals the arrival of a powerful new writer on the crime fiction shelf.

Sequence

Literature & Fiction

United States

Minotaur Books

When a John Doe with a bayonet wound in his chest is discovered in a Washington, D.C. alley, geneticist Dr. Alexandra Blake of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology is pulled away from her bioterrorism work to aid in the investigation. Just a little digging reveals a corpse that's not at all that of the homeless robbery victim it was set up to resemble---and Alex and her colleagues find themselves wrapped up in a complicated mystery of high-stakes international financial intrigue. The homicide investigation is just heating up when a political firestorm erupts over the AFIP's possession of human skulls brought back from Vietnam thirty years earlier by American servicemen. Alex is handed the delicate task of managing the restoration and return of these grisly souvenirs. Even the President of the United States has become involved, with the actual exchange scheduled to take place at a White House ceremony. Alex knows it's an important job---her father was a soldier killed in Vietnam, so she of all people is sensitive to the issues surrounding the war---but to her it still seems like an outsized uproar over something that happened long ago. But the skulls take on much more urgent significance when she uncovers evidence of a much bigger crime, and suddenly Alex discovers she's a target and the White House itself is under fire. The Silent Assassinis a tour-de-force thriller combining the intricate details of forensic science with the dark side of Washington politics and one of the freshest and most original characters in crime fiction today.

The Silent Assassin

Contemporary

One bizarre death is just that---a death. Two? Could be a coincidence. But in Lori Andrews’s latest thriller, geneticist Dr. Alexandra Blake discovers something much more dangerous than a killer---an epidemic. Taking a break from decoding the genetic sequence of a tropical disease, Alex takes on an investigation into the gruesome and unexplained death of a DEA agent on a mob stakeout in New Mexico. Within hours, she uncovers similar deaths throughout the Southwest. Is it a naturally occurring epidemic or has a lethal bioweapon been released in the United States? With the nation’s attention focused on a provocative presidential race, Alex’s attempts to warn Homeland Security fail. Only with the help of a rogue DEA agent and a cutting-edge supercomputer will she and the rest of her team at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology stand a chance of putting an end to the devastation before public hysteria rages out of control. From Alex’s lab to the closed rooms of a killer’s mind, Immunity maps the perfect sequence for an infectious, edge-of-your-seat thriller.

Immunity (Dr. Alexandra Blake Novels)

Dr. Alexandra Blake's new job puts her at the forefront of her industry. As a geneticist at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, D.C., Alex is charged with finding a vaccine against bioterrorism. But the institute's new director, bitter over losing a bid to head the FBI, decides to refocus the institute toward crime solving. Soon Alex is forced to put her research on hold and cover forensics on a gruesome series of murders. Across the country, women near military bases are turning up dead, their corpses covered in strange tattoos. The more Alex studies the case, the more disturbing questions she has about the killer's motives. And when a new headline-making murder strikes particularly close to home, suddenly everyone around Alex--her boss, the Feds, even her congressman boyfriend--becomes suspect. Now it's up to her to succeed where forensics fail, and Alex will risk everything to trace the enemy…or die trying.

Sequence (A Dr. Alexandra Blake Novel)

When a John Doe with a bayonet wound in his chest is discovered in a Washington, D.C., alley, geneticist Dr. Alexandra Blake of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology is pulled away from her bioterrorism work to aid in the investigation. Just a little digging reveals a corpse that€™s nothing like the homeless robbery victim it was set up to resemble€”and Alex and her colleagues find themselves wrapped up in a complicated mystery of high-stakes international financial intrigue.The homicide investigation is just heating up when a political firestorm erupts over the AFIP€™s possession of human skulls brought back from Vietnam thirty years earlier by American servicemen. Alex is handed the delicate task of managing the restoration and return of these grisly souvenirs. But the skulls take on urgent significance when she uncovers evidence of a much bigger crime€¦and suddenly Alex discovers she€™s a target€”and the White House itself is under fire.

The Silent Assassin (Alexandra Blake)

St. Martin's Paperbacks

Perfect for an upper level seminar or course, this casebook traces the legal impacts of genetics across the legal spectrum--from family law to medical law to forensics. It addresses international and federal regulation of genetic research; medical applications including prenatal testing, pharmacogenomics, and gene therapy; paternity testing; intellectual property rights; and the use of genetic technologies by social institutions, including law enforcement, courts, insurers, employers and schools. The 3rd edition newly covers Octomom and President Obama’s stem cell directive. No scientific background on the part of the students or professor is required.

Genetics: Ethics, Law and Policy, 3d (American Casebook Series)

Science & Math

Rothstein, Mark

Mehlman, Maxwell

Evolution

West Academic Publishing

Explores the medical, emotional, and legal ramifications of the diverse infertility treatments

New Conceptions

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Ballantine Books

In the age of biotechnology, the body is speaking to us in new ways. Our DNA, blood, and bones — our very being! — have acquired currency in an exceedingly bizarre fashion that we could not have imagined even a decade ago. Valued as both a source of information and the raw material for commercial products, the tissues in a single human being can now attract millions of dollars, and with them new commercial uses for human blood and body tissue. Because of this, the risks --we face both individually and as a society --are massive and should be understood by everyone. Body parts are useful to researchers and entrepreneurs, insurers and employers, law-enforcement authorities and immigration officials. And they are more easily available than most people suspect. Nearly all of us have blood and tissue on file. Whenever you have a blood test, a biopsy, or surgery, that tissue is potentially available without your consent. Genetic testing is mandatory in many contexts, and our DNA may become our primary identification --the social security number of the future. Human tissue is crucial to health care, but it has also become a medium for artists who have found ways to sculpt in blood and to plastinate skin. Interior decorators buy human skulls in body boutiques. DNA can even be used to run computers, since its replications provide more memory than the binary code. As the body market expands, people have been dismayed to discover that their eggs have been given to other women without their consent and that scientists and biotech companies are making huge profits by secretly patenting their cell lines and genes. Andrews and Nelkin illuminate the business of bodies, telling individual stories to show the profound psychological, social, and financial impacts of the commercialization of human tissue. They explore the problems of privacy and social control that arise with the extraction of information from the body, and the provocative questions of profit and property that follow the creation of marketable products from human bodies. Their findings are shocking, groundbreaking revealing the existence of a $17 billion body business in a true story that reads like science fiction.

Body Bazaar: The Market for Human Tissue in the Biotechnology Age

Business & Money

NELKIN, Dorothy

Economics

Crown

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