Making and disposing of life's ‘starting materials’: A focus group study of attitudes concerning reproductive scarcity and abundance in in vitro gametogenesis

This paper explores stakeholder attitudes toward gametes and embryos in the context of in vitro gametogenesis (IVG), a new stem cell technology whose future clinical application would entail the production of eggs and sperm in vitro. A key concern raised by the prospect of making gametes from originally non-reproductive body cells has been its potential exacerbation of the issue of “surplus” cryopreserved embryos through the production of unprecedented numbers, with an allied devaluation of human reproductive materials. However, this concern has not been empirically investigated. In this study, focus groups composed of individuals representative of the constituency most likely to be impacted by IVG were asked to respond to scenarios in which the relative abundance and scarcity of gametes and embryos were changed by these new procedures. Respondents who had experienced involuntary childlessness and/or previously accessed in vitro fertilization (IVF) technology drew on these experiences to reason their way through future scenarios in which cells could be more fluidly exchanged over the somatic-reproductive boundary. Unfettered abundance was not found to be a key issue for these respondents. Rather, concerns focused on questions of technological control over outcomes in ARTs, cultural scripts about the preciousness of eggs moderated by concordance between the gender or the donor and the sex of the gamete, and in vitro gametes and embryos as embodiments of the often painful and costly process of attaining them.