Medicine of the Beginning of Life. Bioethical...

Assisted reproductive technology (ART) because of the interference with the processes occurring in the very stuff of life has raised many problems concerning its medical, ethical, social, economic and legal aspects. In our book, we take a closer look at some of the questions we consider especially puzzling yet of great importance for ART. We have not attempted an exhaustive presentation of all ART-related issues that have been discussed since the inception of this form of medical intervention, but rather have focused on the questions that seem especially worthy of inquiry as being of a fundamental significance (the status of the human embryo), those relating to the ART procedure so frequently performed that it refers to the broad swathe of ART cases (egg donation), to a procedure that is especially challenging morally (preimplantation genetic diagnosis), and to the ART problem which is very often overlooked or misrepresented (parental age).