Fertilization Through a Looking Glass: a sociology of UK IVF in the late-twentieth century. (360G-Wellcome-100606_Z_12_Z)

In vitro fertilization is one of the most successful technological innovations of the late-twentieth century, and yet is one whose recent historical present remains largely unanalysed. Five aspects of this history are combined in the proposed research, which aims to chart the emergence of clinical IVF in the UK during a distinctive era of basic scientific investigation of mammalian developmental biology. UK scientists and clinicians, as well as policy makers, have played a leading role in the de velopment and translation of IVF technology, but while doing so faced unique challenges and dealt with unprecedented questions concerning the ethical, social, technological, scientific, and cultural implications of this unique technology. Drawing on interviews with many of the key players involved in IVFs translation into clinical practice, and supplementing these with a range of other sources, the research explores how the introduction of IVF was navigated, and what can be learned from this unu sual case of rapid technological change affecting the basic mechanisms of human reproduction. The primary goal is to characterise the intersection of biological reproduction, technological agency, ethical frameworks, scientific knowledge, and public culture through which IVF has become an accepted and regular fact of life. The value of the research lies both in improving sociological understandings of pivotal technological changes in the past, and the improved possibility such understandings off er to the accurate modelling of similar changes in the future, as human reproductive biology is brought under increasingly powerful forms of technological control.