LAUSR

There is a vast wealth of academic literature examining the regulation of assisted reproductive technologies, but the important part of the title of Dr Amel Alghrani’s new book,NewHorizons, indicates that the content goes beyond a typical analysis of the current legal issues troubling scholars in the field of medical law and ethics. Instead, it focuses on future developments. The book is separated into two distinct parts: Part I is entitled ‘Regulating reproductive technologies: challenges old and new’. It provides a compact account of the regulatory framework governing the more established, and perhaps now less controversial, reproductive technologies available, such as IVF. In that regard, the book assumes some prior understanding of the legislative development of the law and related socio-political issues leading up to the passage of both the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 (HFEA 1990) and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 (HFEA 2008). Part II of this book, however, focuses on the law’s complex relationship with what is to come with reproductive medicine in the future. Alghrani’s resounding emphasis is that in order to develop laws within a society that is democratic, and adopt such divergent views on the new horizons in reproductive technologies, the laws should embody a progressive and proactive approach. The law needs to keep pace with an ever-evolving field of medicine which is, arguably, no longer futuristic given the development of two reproductive technologies which Alghrani explores in depth: uterus transplantation and ectogenesis. In part, Chapter 1 offers a descriptive examination of the relationship between law and human reproduction and the regulatory challenges therein. It is Alghrani’s stated to aim to provide an account of the UK’s comprehensive regulatory framework through ‘a past, present and future lens’ and this chapter delivers precisely that. The analytic and liberal influences from the likes of John Harris, Roger Brownsword and Emily Jackson are immediately identifiable in the earlier sections of the chapter, setting in place the foundations for Alghrani’s staunch critique of the current regulatory framework as we approach what she describes throughout as the third wave of human reproductive technologies. No sooner has she provided a detailed chronology of the legislative development of the HFEA 2008, than she systematically reinforces her previous criticism, argued a decade ago, that the government missed an ideal opportunity to consider how better to equip the regulatory framework. It is convincingly argued that despite there being a very well-established reproductive industry, legal challenges charged against the HFEA 2008 have consistently exposed the framework’s vulnerabilities, such as the growing market in reproductive tourism. What Alghrani does well is to challenge the present system of regulation whereby the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) maintains its discretionary power to formulate public policy in this area. She claims it might lack the required courage to prioritise and make decisions about the licensing and use of novel reproductive techniques – such as artificial gametes – and the implications of using them in a legal, ethical and modern scientific sense.