Social Acceptance of Ethically Controversed Innovative Techniques Related to or Derived from Assisted Reproductive Technologies – A Review of Literature

Abstract

In vitro fertilization (IVF) is the most widely known assisted reproductive technique (ART). Due to IVF, a number of medical practices have emerged, such as surrogate motherhood or cryopreservation of human embryos, which gives the possibility to have children not only to infertile heterosexual couples at the normal age of procreation, but also to homosexual or lesbian couples or to people who are past the biological age when they could naturally procreate. IVF makes it possible to create embryos outside the human body, and therefore opens the door for the possibility of physical and moral augmentation of the future child prior to implanting the embryo in uterus, as well as for embryonic stem cell research, in order to find the causality of diseases and treat them, but also for experiments that today do not seem so futuristic anymore, such as tcreating human-animal chimeras or hybrids, or cloning. This article aims to analyze the relevant literature on the mechanism of achieving social acceptability for these controversial techniques.