The "brave new baby" and the law: fashioning remedies for the victims of in vitro fertilization.
The birth of the world's first "test-tube baby", a child conceived by in vitro fertilization (IVF), raises serious medical, ethical, and legal problems. This Note explores the present controversy over the use of IVF and advocates federal regulation of the technique. Furthermore, this Note argues that, in order to deter unduly hazardous use of IVF and to compensate its victims, an experimenter should be subject to civil liability for either negligent, or willful and nonconsensual, destruction of an IVF conceptus, and held strictly liable when an IVF child is born with severe defects that are attributable to the use of the technique.
D035881:Compensation and Redress; D000013:Congenital Abnormalities / Q000209:etiology; D004992:Ethics, Medical; D035082:Federal Government; D005260:Female; D005307:Fertilization in Vitro; D033161:Government Regulation; D006708:Homicide; D006801:Humans; D007258:Informed Consent; D007603:Jurisprudence; D011247:Pregnancy; D012106:Research; D018570:Risk Assessment; D014481:United States; D014483:United States Dept. of Health and Human Services