Test Tube Babies Huxley Opens His Novel

Test Tube Babies

Huxley opens his novel describing a world that is built around "…the production line of products and services, including human reproduction," writes Coleman Carroll Myron in the book Huxley's Brave New World: Essays. Huxley's narrative has scientists propagating the human species through a process which creates "standardized human beings in an assembly-line, conveyor-belt-like system" (Myron, 2008, p. 12).

In his book (p. 7) a young student was "fool enough" to question how test tube babies were an "advantage" to society. The Director immediately replied, "Can't you see? Can't you see?" The process being used is "…one of the major instruments of social stability!" The Director insisted (Huxley, 2010 / Reprint). The author was putting forward the science fiction-like idea that "Standard men and women; in uniform batches," was a better idea than humans engaging in normal intercourse, with an uncertain outcome as far as the quality of the individual that is born.

In Vitro Fertilization (IVF)

Huxley's rather dreary fascist-themed idea of how to produce "social stability" through test tube babies notwithstanding, the truth in 2013 is that In Vitro Fertilization is alive and well, and is an acceptable way for a woman (and hence, a couple) to start a family. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) refer to IVF as "Assisted Reproductive Technology," or ART. The science behind ART is not difficult to understand: ART procedures involve removing eggs from a woman's ovaries (surgically), and in the laboratory, those eggs are joined with sperm, and then the eggs (now fertilized) are either returned to the woman's uterus or implanted in another woman's body who wishes to have a baby but was otherwise not able to become pregnant.

The advantages of ART are many, as the thousands of women who have had babies through ART can attest. The CDC reports that ART has been used successfully since 1981, and as an example of how often this procedure is performed, in 2011 there were 163,039 ART cycles performed at 451 clinics in the U.S. (CDC). From those 163,039 cycles, there were "…47,818 live births (deliveries of one or more living infants) and 61,610 live born infants" (CDC). An additional advantage is that it can "alleviate" the problem of infertility when a couple (or a single woman) desires to have a family.

The downside of ART is that sometimes there are "multiple deliveries" (meaning twins, or triplets, or more babies), according to CDC. Moreover, as Susana Silva and colleague write in the peer-reviewed journal Health, Risk & Society, there are "uncertainties and risks" within the IVF program (Silva, et al., 2010). The authors insist that through interviews with 15 couples that had gone through the process, some were unsuccessful in becoming pregnant, and some had strong feelings about the process. Several couples that were still not able to conceive reported feelings like "…revolt and unfairness due to their involuntary childlessness," and a woman named Isabel Campos said, "The anxiety is so much that sometimes the treatment will not work…" (Silva, 537).