Embryo Politics: Ethics and Policy in Atlantic Democracies - Hardcover

Thomas Banchoff is Director of the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and Professor in the Department of Government and School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He is the author of The German Problem Transformed: Institutions, Politics, and Foreign Policy, 1945–1995, editor of Religious Pluralism, Globalization, and World Politics and Democracy and the New Religious Pluralism, and coeditor of Religion and the Global Politics of Human Rights and Legitimacy and the European Union: The Contested Polity.

"Banchoff does not fall prey to the allures of science fiction and he avoids sensationalism, but his book is sensational. It is an exciting read and should generate a great deal of public interest because it sets out with clarity the many strands, both ethical and political, that make up in vitro fertilization (IVF), stem cell research and cloning."

"As Thomas Banchoff notes in Embryo Politics, 'the human embryo only slowly emerged as an object of ethical controversy.' This lucid and well-written book relates a comparative history of this controversy in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and France."

"Banchoff's historical outline of these debates over embryo research and use is accurate and engaging, showing clearly how the different political backgrounds against which they took place shaped their later contours. He also addresses the difficult moral questions surrounding the moral status of embryos, how the law should respond to this status, and how these questions intersect with the need for biomedical progress where such 'progress depends on research on embryos. This is a very clear, well-written, engaging volume, and one that could be read with profit and interest by anyone curious about what is one of the most pressing debates of the moment. Summing Up: Highly recommended for all readership levels."