Fifty years after the death of Edmund Husserl, the main founder of the phenomenological current of thought, we present to the public a four book collection showing in an unprecedented way how Husserl's aspiration to inspire the entire universe of knowledge and scholarship has now been realized. These volumes display for the first time the astounding expansion of phenomenological philosophy throughout the world and the enormous wealth and variety of ideas, insights, and approaches it has inspired. The basic commitment to (...) phenomenological concerns found in all this variety makes this collection a most signifi cant historical document. This second volume of the collection bears witness to a deliberate shift of attention from the earlier to the later phase of Husserl's reflections. We see how his issues - intersubjectivity, ethics, human encounter, the societal world, empathy, the sphere of the self, and the surpassing of dichotomies (bodylpsyche, etc.) - are now at the center of attention in the human sciences. Among the authors are H. Tellenbach, A. Rigobello, C. Balzer, C. Bjurvill, V. Molchanov, E. Syristova, O. Balaban, R. Boehm, M. Sancipriano, O. M. Anwar, Y. Okamoto, B. Holyst, T. Sodeika, and M. De Negri. The studies were gathered at the programs held by The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning in the commemorative year 1988/1989, chiefly at the First World Congress of Phenomenology at Santiago de Compos tela, Spain, with the aim of assessing the current state of phenomenology. A-T. T. (shrink)

This volume marks a phase of accomplishment in the work of the World Phenomenology Institute in unfolding a dialogue between Occidental phenomenology and the Oriental/Chinese classic philosophy. Going beyond the stage of reception, the Oriental scholars show in this collection of studies their perspicacity and philosophical skills in comparing the concepts, ideas, the vision of classic phenomenology and Chinese philosophy toward uncovering their common intuitions. This in-depth probing aims at reviving Occidental thinking, reaching to its intuitive sources, as well as (...) providing Chinese thinking with a precise apparatus of expression toward its rejuvenation in a new significance. Studies by Korean and Chinese phenomenologists: Nam-In Lee, Inhui Park, Benjamin I. Schwartz, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Sitansu Ray, Zhang Xian, Zhang Qingxiong, Tsung-I Dow, Ashok K. Gangadean, Yushiro Takei, Louise Sunderarajan, Gregory Tropea, James Sellmann, Tyong Bok Rhie, Sang-Ki Kim, Daniel Zelinski, Qingjie Wang, Calvin O. Schrag, Jung-Sun Han. (shrink)

In her introduction to this collection, Tymieniecka presents her phenomenology of life - the leitmotif of the three-volume anniversary publication of Analecta Husserliana - as something that stands out from preceding historical attempts to investigate life in an 'integral' or 'scientific' way. After an incubation lasting throughout the 2000 years of Occidental philosophy, this scientific phenomenology/philosophy of life at last uncovers the entire area of the 'inner workings of Nature', exposing the way in which the 'sufficient reason' and the 'ground' (...) of beingness as such crystallise out of the 'onto poietic' process. This onto-poietic process, continuing as it does in the human creative condition, also reveals the authentic genius of the works of the human spirit. This new and original philosophy, free of fallacious simplifications, speculations and reductionism, opens up a basic starting point for all philosophy. Life, 'the theme of our times', at last receives a profound philosophical treatment. (shrink)

Wild Ideas is a collection of essays that brings a fresh and refreshing perspective to the wilderness paradoxically at the center of our civilization.

The Fifth International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science was held at the University of Western Ontario, London, Canada, 27 August to 2 September 1975. The Congress was held under the auspices of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science, Division of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, and was sponsored by the National Research Council of Canada and the University of Western Ontario. As those associated closely with the work of the Division over the years (...) know well, the work undertaken by its members varies greatly and spans a number of fields not always obviously related. In addition, the volume of work done by first rate scholars and scientists in the various fields of the Division has risen enormously. For these and related reasons it seemed to the editors chosen by the Divisional officers that the usual format of publishing the proceedings of the Congress be abandoned in favour of a somewhat more flexible, and hopefully acceptable, method of pre sentation. Accordingly, the work of the invited participants to the Congress has been divided into four volumes appearing in the University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science. The volumes are entitled, Logic, Foundations of Mathematics and Computability Theory, Foun dational Problems in the Special Sciences, Basic Problems in Methodol ogy and Linguistics, and Historical and Philosophical Dimensions of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science. (shrink)

This collection is the final volume of a four book survey of the state of phenomenology fifty years after the death of Edmund Husserl. Its publication represents a landmark in the comprehensive treatment of contemporary phenomenology in all its vastness and richness. The diversity of the issues raised here is dazzling, but the main themes of Husserl's thought are all either explicitly treated, or else they underlie the ingenious approaches found here. Time, historicity, intentionality, eidos, meaning, possibility/reality, and teleology are (...) the main concerns of this collection devoted to studies in aesthetics, metaphysics and literary interpretation, written by such authors as, among others, R. Cobb-Stevens, C. Moreno Marquez, J. Swiecimski, Sitansu Ray and M. Kronegger. These original studies of phenomenological aesthetics and literary theory by scholars from all parts of the world were gathered by the World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learn ing during the year 1988/89 during its assessment of the phenomeno logical movement, fifty years after Husserl's death. IX A -T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXXVII, ix. (shrink)

orbit and far beyond it. Indeed, the immense, painstaking, indefatigable and ever-improving effort of Husserl to find ever-deeper and more reliable foundations for the philosophical enterprise (as well as his constant critical re-thinking and perfecting of the approach and so called "method" in order to perform this task and thus cover in this source-excavation an ever more far-reaching groundwork) stands out and maintains itself as an inepuisable reservoir for philosophical reflec tion in which all the above-mentioned work has either its (...) core or its source. In fact, in his undertaking to re-think the entire philosophical enterprise as such and to recreate philosophy upon what he sought to be at least a satisfactorily legitimated basis, Husserl, through his already systematised and "authorized" work, and his courses, and later on in his spontaneous reflection (which did not find its way into a definitive corpus but was nevertheless sufficiently coherent with his previously established body of thought to be considered a continuation of it), uncovers perspectives upon the universe of man and projects their new philosophical thematisation that brings together all the attempts by philosophers (e. g., Merleau-Ponty, who drew upon this material and found there his own inspiration) who succeeded him with foundational intentions; it also gives a core of philosophical ideas and insights for the youngergenerationofphilosophers today. (shrink)

Papers presented at the IVR 11th World Congress, Helsinki, 1983.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:At the Vortex of Controversy:Developing Guidelines for Human Embryo ResearchRonald M. Green (bio)Because of the unavoidable time delay between the submission and publication of this article, its readers will have a significant advantage over its writer: You will know whether the recommendations of the Report of the Human Embryo Research Panel, on which I have served as a member since its inception in January of this year, are progressing (...) smoothly as the basis for evaluating future, federally-funded embryo research—or whether any of the recommendations has become stalled in controversy and political dispute. Staid journals like Science already are predicting that the Panel's Report is likely to create a stormy autumn for the National Institutes of Health.The Panel formally presented its Report to NIH Director Harold Varmus on September 27. The Panel's recommendations will be reviewed by the Advisory Committee to the Director (ACD) until the ACD's next meeting in early December. At that time, the ACD will make formal recommendations to Dr. Varmus, who then will initiate the process of drafting federal regulations that could go into effect by Spring 1995.Historical BackgroundControversy is not new to the area of human embryo research. In the United States, federal regulations enacted in the mid-1970s required any research on the human embryo to be approved by a federally mandated Ethics Advisory Board (EAB). The EAB drafted a significant report that provided ethical guidelines for research on the early, ex utero, human embryo. However, before the report could be acted upon, a new administration, which was opposed to abortion and anything remotely viewed as threatening to prenatal life, came to office, and when the EAB's charter expired in 1980, it was not renewed. In this manner, the Reagan and Bush administrations forestalled any federal support for embryo research in the United States. The next 13 years saw a significant expansion of infertility services in this country, but in the absence of federal funding and [End Page 345] review, there was very little systematic research on either infertility procedures or the human embryo.In January 1993, the U.S. political environment changed again when the Clinton administration fulfilled a campaign promise to remove a nearly five-year-old ban on fetal tissue transplantation research. Although fetal tissue research, which uses the remains of an aborted fetus, significantly differs from embryo research, which involves the developing conceptus ex utero before its transfer to and implantation in a womb, the changed political environment stimulated public discussion of embryo research as well. As a result, in June 1993, Congress nullified the federal regulations requiring EAB review for embryo research. Although this presumably left NIH free to fund embryo research without restrictions, NIH officials felt that guidelines were needed to ensure that such research was conducted in an ethically and socially responsible manner. Accordingly, in January 1994, NIH formed the Human Embryo Research Panel to propose such guidelines.The Panel Begins its WorkChaired by Steven Muller, President emeritus of the Johns Hopkins University, the Panel's 19 members included 7 basic and clinical scientists, 4 ethicists, 2 lawyers, and 6 individuals representing various backgrounds relevant to the making of public policy. Patricia King of the Georgetown University Law Center and Brigid Hogan, a cell biologist at Vanderbilt University, were appointed policy and science co-chairs respectively. Meeting for the first time in early February, the Panel was told by its chair and co-chairs that NIH's need for guidance in the face of pending proposals meant that it had approximately six months—including five one- to two-day meetings each month in Washington—in which to complete its work.In his charge, Dr. Varmus asked the Panel to place the possible areas of research into three categories: (1) acceptable for federal funding; (2) warranting additional review; and (3) unacceptable for federal support. In addition, he asked the Panel to draft guidelines for the review and conduct of the research deemed acceptable.Looking back after months of work, I vividly recall a sense of the enormity of the task facing us. We were being asked, in a short period of time, not only to master... (shrink)

A wide range of conflicting established moral viewpoints makes development of public policy related to infertility difficult. Where there are pluralities of viewpoints and no single established moral approach, uniform solutions are questionable. The Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), is a nonpartisan analytic support agency that serves the United States Congress by providing objective analyses of major public policy issues related to scientific and technological change. Because analysis of ethical issues is an important part of technology assessment, OTA included (...) a thematic analysis of ethical issues in the report, Infertility: Medical and Social Choices . A consideration of whether infertility is a disease was an important conceptual starting point, and religious perspectives were reviewed as possible sources of moral and ethical insight. Keywords: infertility, U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, infertility, right to reproduce, embryo CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Claims about whether or not infertility is a disease are sometimes invoked to defend or criticize the provision of state-funded treatment for infertility. In this paper, I suggest that this strategy is problematic. By exploring infertility through key approaches to disease in the philosophy of medicine, I show that there are deep theoretical disagreements regarding what subtypes of infertility qualify as diseases. Given that infertility's disease status remains unclear, one cannot uncontroversially justify or undermine its (...) claim to medical treatment by claiming that it is or is not a disease. Instead of focusing on disease status, a preferable strategy to approach the debate about state-funded treatment is to explicitly address the specific ethical considerations raised by infertility. I show how this alternative strategy can be supported by a recent theoretical framework in the philosophy of medicine, which avoids the problems associated with the concepts of health and disease. (shrink)

I explore the role that values and interests, especially ideological interests, play in managing and balancing epistemic risks in medicine. I will focus in particular on how diseases are identified and operationalized. Before we can do biomedical research on a condition, it needs to be identified as a medical condition, and it needs to be operationalized in a way that lets us identify sufferers, measure progress, and so forth. I will argue that each time we do this, we engage in (...) epistemic risk balancing that inevitably draws upon values and interests, often including social and ideological values. My main interest here is in the conceptualization of infertility as a disease. Infertility is a rich test case for exploring the interplay between interests and epistemic risk management. There is no uncontested or standardized definition of infertility. The various definitions of it are internally ambiguous and tension-ridden, and in spectacular contradiction with one another. Many interest groups who are invested in framing infertility as a pressing problem deserving of social and medical redress are quick to insist that it is a legitimate ‘disease,’ but they cannot agree on which disease it is, what its symptoms or diagnostic markers are, or even what its basic ontology is. I suggest that there are political explanations for this epistemic mess. Indeed, I contend that there are good scientific and ethical reasons to reduce away the category of ‘infertility,’ especially understood as a scientific or medical category; I argue that we should excise the concept from our research and clinical practices. (shrink)

Infertility can be an agonizing experience, especially for women. And, much of the agony has to do with luck: with how unlucky one is in being infertile, and in how much luck is involved in determining whether one can weather the storm of infertility and perhaps have a child in the end. We argue that bad luck associated with being infertile is often bad moral luck for women. The infertile woman often blames herself or is blamed by others (...) for what is happening to her, even when she cannot control or prevent what is happening to her. She has simply had bad luck. We focus on the self-blame of infertile women and show how it stems from pro-natalism that targets women. We also argue that overall for women, regret is a better moral response to infertility than self-blame. (shrink)

This article discusses the new reproductive technology of egg freezing in the context of existing literature on gender, medicalization, and infertility. What is unique about this technology is its use by women who are not currently infertile but who may anticipate a future diagnosis. This circumstance gives rise to a new ontological category of “anticipated infertility.” The author draws on participant observation and a qualitative analysis of scientific, mainstream, and marketing literature to identify and compare the representation of (...) two different candidates for egg freezing: women with cancer and healthy young women. Although both populations experience anticipated infertility, their dichotomous portrayals as appropriate candidates are demonstrative of gender norms linking women to motherhood. Egg freezing is a concise illustration of how the medicalization of women’s bodies and bodily processes masks a host of cultural anxieties about aging, illness, reproduction, and risk. (shrink)

Using qualitative data based on interviews with 22 married infertile couples living in western New York State, we describe the ways in which husbands and wives interact in the process of constructing their infertility. The wives experienced infertility as a cataclysmic role failure. Husbands tended to see infertility as a disconcerting event but not as a tragedy. Couples tended to see infertility as a problem for wives. Frustration and lack of communication were typical consequences of the (...) confrontation of husbands' and wives' perspectives on infertility. Interactions with medical professionals tended to reinforce these consequences. These interactions between wives, husbands, and medical professionals may lead to taking wrong directions in treatment and to ignoring treatment options. Some of the problems we describe could be lessened by adopting a model of couple-centered treatment in a setting that incorporated routine counseling. (shrink)

Infertility specialists may be confronted with the ethical dilemma of whether to disclose misattributed paternity (MP). Physicians should be prepared for instances when an assumed father’s evaluation reveals a condition known for lifelong infertility, for example, congenital bilateral absence of vas deferens (CBAVD). When there is doubt regarding a patient’s comprehension of his diagnosis, physicians must consider whether further disclosure is warranted. This article describes a case of MP with ethics analysis that concludes that limited nondisclosure is most (...) consistent with a physician’s principled duties to inform, to respect patients’ autonomy, and to employ nonmaleficence (including the avoidance of psychosocial harms). (shrink)

This chapter explores current and prospective reproductive technologies and some of their likely implications for reproductive and family ethics and policymaking. The technologies discussed include uterus transplants, mitochondrial transfer, ectogenesis, the development of in vitro gametes, and solo reproduction. The chapter considers the impact of these developments on the content of concepts such as 'infertility', 'mother', or 'father'. Another layer to this process of redefinition originates in ongoing socio-cultural changes that shift the focus in parenting from the way in (...) which children have come into the world, to relationships within the family. Considering these scenarios beforehand can help to clarify some of the current challenges in defining and regulating infertility. The chapter therefore aims to raise a number of questions rather than provide answers. (shrink)

Patterns of reproductive failure described in humans and other mammals suggest that reproductive failure may in many instances be the result of adaptations evolved to suppress reproduction under temporarily harsh conditions. By suppressing reproduction under such conditions, females are able to conserve their time and energy for reproductive opportunities in which reproduction is most likely to succeed. Such adaptations have been particularly important for female mammals, given (a) the amount of time and energy that reproduction requires, and (b) the degree (...) to which reproductive conditions can vary.The existence of conscious and unconscious mechanisms to suppress reproduction under poor conditions has several implications for obstetric/gynecologic practices. Two implications are discussed with reference to biotechnological advancements in our ability to facilitate conceptions and manage problem pregnancies: (a) potential dangers of sophisticated technologies overriding natural fertility controls; and (b) the need for greater appreciation of the association between psychosocial stress and reproductive failure in the treatment of reproductive problems. Implications for elective abortion practices are discussed as well. (shrink)

Pfeiffer, Kimberley We've heard it happening more than once. A couple uses IVF to fall pregnant then later down the track they conceive naturally. Confusing, right? Aren't they supposed to be infertile? Isn't that why people request this invasive and expensive procedure in the first place? Well, a recent study shows that more than 40% of women aged between 28 and 36 years that report having a history of infertility achieved subsequent births without using any form of reproductive assistance1. (...) Which raises the question, what does it mean to be infertile? (shrink)

This article examines two questions pertaining to the extension of infertility treatment to postmenopausal women. First, what concepts and principles of infertility practice apply to assisted reproduction for the postmenopausal patient? Second, what role should these concepts play in the development of an ethical justification for extending women's reproductive lives past the menopausal boundary? The argument offered here supports their claim to infertility services on the basis of the formal principle of justice, which requires that similar cases (...) be treated similarly. The cases of many postmenopausal patients are argued to be relevantly similar to classes of patients who already receive assistance in reproduction. (shrink)

Many countries tightly ration access to publicly funded fertility treatments such as in vitro fertilisation. One basis for excluding people from access to IVF is their body mass index. In this paper, I consider a number of potential justifications for such a policy, based on claims about effectiveness and cost-efficiency, and reject these as unsupported by available evidence. I consider an alternative justification: that those whose subfertility results from avoidable behaviours for which they are responsible are less deserving of treatment. (...) I ultimately stop short of endorsing or rejecting such a justification, though highlight some reasons for thinking it is unlikely to be practicable. (shrink)

Infertility constitutes an essential source of stress in the individual and couple’s life. The Infertility-Related Stress Scale is of clinical interest for exploring infertility-related stress affecting the intrapersonal and interpersonal domains of infertile individuals’ lives. In the present study, the IRSS was translated into Brazilian–Portuguese, and its factor structure, reliability, and relations to sociodemographic and infertility-related characteristics and depression were examined. A sample of 553 Brazilian infertile individuals completed the Brazilian–Portuguese IRSS, and a subsample of 222 (...) participants also completed the BDI-II. A sample of 526 Italian infertile individuals was used to test for the IRSS measurement invariance across Brazil and Italy. Results of exploratory structural equation modeling indicated that a bifactor solution best represented the structure underlying the IRSS-BP. Both the general and the two specific intrapersonal and interpersonal IRSS-BP factors showed satisfactory levels of composite reliability. The bifactor ESEM solution replicated well across countries. As evidence of relations to other variables, female gender, a longer duration of infertility, and higher depression were associated with higher scores in global and domain-specific infertility-related stress. The findings offer initial evidence of validity and reliability of the IRSS-BP, which could be used by fertility clinic staff to rapidly identify patients who need support to deal with the stressful impact of infertility in the intrapersonal and interpersonal life domains, as recommended by international guidelines for routine psychosocial care in infertility settings. (shrink)

In a heart-wrenching TEDx Beacon Street talk entitled "A Journey Through Infertility: Over Terror's Edge", Camille Preston narrates her traumatic journey through infertility. Although she is now the mother of a child, Preston's characterization of infertility as "over terror's edge" and as "a journey" finds a graphic expression in Paula Knight's The Facts of Life, Emily Steinberg's Broken Eggs, and Phoebe Potts's Good Eggs. Unlike Preston, these authors do not give birth to a child; however, they authentically (...) portray the tribulations of infertility in their respective graphic memoirs. While Knight's memoir chronicles her traumatic experience of being an infertile woman in a society that... (shrink)

In Turkey, as in many other countries, infertility is generally regarded as a negative phenomenon in a woman’s life and is associated with a lot of stigma by society. In other words, female infertility and having a baby using Assisted Reproductive Technologies have to be taken into consideration with respect to gender, motherhood, social factors, religion and law. Yet if a woman chooses to use ART she has to deal with the consequences of her decision, such as being (...) ostracized by society. Other types of procedures in this area, such as sperm and ova donation or surrogate motherhood, are not permitted in law. However, both before and after the development of this techonology, society has been finding its own solutions which are rarely questioned and are still performed. This article will discuss what these practices are and try to reach some pragmatic conclusions concerning female infertility, the concept of motherhood and some traditional practices in Turkey. (shrink)

Murphy etal. (1997) showed age-standardised twinning rates for Scotland and England & Wales 195281 and subsequently increased to about 11·5 per 1000 in 1992–94. The authors conclude their paper with the words: 'perhaps 15% oftwins nationally now follow treatment and the natural twinning rate mightstill be in decline'.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Infertility Treadmill: Feminist Ethics, Personal Choice, and the Use of Reproductive Technologies by Karey HarwoodKathryn Lilla CoxThe Infertility Treadmill: Feminist Ethics, Personal Choice, and the Use of Reproductive Technologies Karey Harwood Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. 221pp. $22.00Karey Harwood’s The Infertility Treadmill, published in the University of North Carolina’s Studies in Social Medicine series, fills a lacuna in the (...) class='Hi'>infertility literature. Harwood takes an interdisciplinary approach examining “assisted reproductive technologies” (ART) using current scientific, philosophical, theological, and—most importantly—her own ethnographic research. By way of a thick description of women’s experiences of infertility, she draws the reader into a rich ethical conversation regarding ARTs.Harwood “seeks first and foremost to offer an interpretation of the ethical significance of the increasing use of ART by bringing a particular set of normative or evaluative lenses to bear on a particular set of descriptive data” (8). She engaged in this study because of her desire to explore the connections between decisions to use ART and such factors as paid employment, delayed childbirth, and the ongoing balancing of work and family life. Harwood gathered her descriptive data by spending a year with the Atlanta chapter of RESOLVE (The National Infertility Association): attending monthly meetings and listening to speakers and participants as well as appraising RESOLVE’s national and local literature. She also conducted nine interviews with eight women and one man. Focusing on work and family conflicts in light of questions related to gender justice and the interplay between social and communal norms theories, on the one hand, and private and individual choice, on the other, Harwood teases out the ethical complexity surrounding ARTs.After surveying philosophical and theological literature relevant to her topic, Harwood names and examines existential concerns that emerged from her observations, conversations, and interviews with RESOLVE members. Clustered thematically, these concerns include the painful isolation of infertility, the stigma attached to using ARTs, people’s moralizing, how much treatment to pursue, what is the value in trying one more thing, socioeconomic status, and emotional awareness (62–97). Throughout her discussion of these concerns, [End Page 209] Harwood reminds ethicists of the importance of personal narratives for any treatment of an ethical issue like this.Moreover, her research leads Harwood to deduce that RESOLVE helps people with meaning-making, questions of purpose, language clarification, and various options surrounding infertility and ARTs. She asserts that the infertility experience can be a transformative one for the infertile. The decision-making process regarding the use of ARTs functioned as a type of ritual—albeit “a consumeristic ritual”—that aided people in working through the grief of infertility (157). Religious institutions have not always helped the infertile in these areas. Nonetheless, Harwood’s study leads her to conclude that RESOLVE members and leaders tend to be deficient in their capacities for challenging and critically examining how individual decisions intertwine with larger social contexts.Harwood acknowledges that her methodological decision to focus on one RESOLVE chapter limited her demographics (63–64). Moreover, although for the most part balanced, Harwood’s assessment of her findings is at times partial, even bordering on advocacy. For example, she clearly seeks to make the case that ethical analyses of infertility need to be more nuanced—incorporating more personal narrative—and that RESOLVE needs to be more open to critical self-reflection, especially the critical questioning of the “treadmill of infertility” (133). In her analysis of her findings, Harwood demonstrates how personal narratives help nuance ethical analysis. Less clear is whether RESOLVE can be or wants to be more self-critical and more questioning of its own core premises. Nonetheless, these limitations do not detract from Harwood’s important insights regarding “the infertility treadmill” and the host of issues related to ARTs—including consumerism, the role of rituals, meaning-making, suffering and grief, and gender justice, among others.Those struggling with infertility or considering ARTs will find Harwood to be an empathetic dialogue partner. Others will gain a deeper understanding of infertility’s toll by reading this book. Graduate and advanced undergraduate students will benefit from Harwood’s analysis of how personal decisions have wide-ranging... (shrink)

Fiction television series are one of the few cultural expressions in which men’s infertility experiences are represented. Through a content analysis of twenty fiction series, this article describes and analyzes such representations. By drawing on Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity and Ricoeur’s understanding of paradoxical power structuring, four character types of infertile men are identified: (1) the virile in/fertile man, (2) the secretly non-/vasectomized man, (3) the intellectual eunuch, (4) the enslaving post-apocalyptic man. While these various dramatis persona outline (...) different ways of how infertile men relate to normative hegemonic masculinity, they all represent infertile men as diverging from shared masculine norms. This non-normativity initially excludes many represented men from hegemonic positions. Eventually, however, these men generally aspire to and succeed in reaffirming their hegemonic masculinity through coercive force towards women and other men, through instigating the precondition for any power structure – the shared will to live together as a community –, and/or by seeking and finding explicit recognition for their normativity and dominance. At the end of this paper, I will reflect on the potential harmful effect of these outlined representations of infertile men and make a plea for diversifying representations of infertile men in our culture. (shrink)

The Chief Medical Officer of Health of the United Kingdom has recommended that the 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act should be amended to allow cloning in humans for research purposes only. He also recommended that: “The transfer of an embryo created by cell nuclear replacement into the uterus of a woman (so called ‘reproductive cloning’) should remain a criminal offence” (recommendation 7, Ref. 1). This recommendation implies that nuclear replacement and cloning are the same. They are not. Nuclear transfer (...) constitutes reproductive cloning only when the individual created is genetically identical to the nuclear donor. In this paper, we describe a possible future use of nuclear transfer for the treatment of infertile individuals. The treatment yields an individual that receives approximately equal genetic contributions from each parent. We use this example to illustrate how semantic confusion might lead to plausibly moral and justifiable treatments being legally banned. In doing so, we hope to encourage a more accurate and informed use of language in science, law and politics, so that legislation is properly informed by science and achieves what it intends. BioEssays 23:359–364, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)