Twilight Bioethics: Reproduction and Technology

Series of three conferences organised by the CIUP's Club des chercheurs, with Benjamin Hegarty, Senior Research Associate in medical anthropology at the UNSW Sydney and 2024-2025 research-fellow at the Paris IAS (FIAS program), and Anne Le Goff, philosopher, researcher at the forefront of science and technology studies and bioethics based at the Institut SupBiotech in Paris and 2024-2025 research-fellow at the Paris IAS (FIAS program).

Open to the public with mandatory registration (see link below).
Presentations will be given in English and questions will be welcome either in English or French.
The sessions will be followed by receptions with drinks.

Presentation

What if humans could reproduce using lab-made gametes and grow their babies in artificial wombs? What are the ethical lessons of changing technologies related to existing practices, like human milk banks?

The Twilight Bioethics series brings together interdisciplinary contemporary questions of how scientific and medical technology is reconfiguring boundaries between life and death, the body and personhood, some of which are anticipated in science fiction. The focus of the series will be on the “ethics of life,” concerned specifically with processes of reproduction and life-creating or -sustaining techniques at the earliest stages of development.

The development of such biotechnologies requires attention to their ethical implications from a broad range of perspectives. The series hopes to stimulate discussion between scholars, scientists, and practitioners from a broad range of disciplines to consider the meaning and potential impacts of these technologies on human and animal life. These cross-cutting themes will be considered through a focus on three current technologies that are at different stages of research and introduction, namely human milk banks, in vitro gametogenesis, and artificial wombs or ectogenesis.

Scientific committee:
Benjamin Hegarty, Paris IAS
Anne Le Goff, Paris IAS
Jack Turley, CIUP
Bertrand Cosson, Paris Cité University, CIUP

Program

Human Milk Banking - 5 February 2025 (6pm-8pm)
With Mathilde Cohen (Paris IAS), Benjamin Hegarty (Paris IAS) and Cécile Vermot (SupBiotech Institute)

Human milk is the only human substance specifically used as a food for infants, and rests on specifically gendered practices generally associated with women. In contemporary France and several other countries, donated human milk is distributed via human milk banks. Bioethicists have focused on donated human milk in terms of the necessity of regulating it as a tissue, usually compared to blood donation, for the reasons that it can harbour risky pathogens. However, historically, human milk has held different cultural, social, legal, and medical meanings, including as food and as an economic resource. This session will consider different perspectives from law and social sciences regarding the regulation of human milk, whether as ‘tissue,’ food, or something else, with a particular focus on the implications for mothers and  gendered social understandings of human milk as a multifaceted substance in different settings.

Making Gametes In Vitro - 20 March 2025 (6pm-8pm)
With Anne Le Goff (Paris IAS, CIUP), Gabriel Livera (Université Paris Cité, CEA) and Noémie Merleau-Ponty (CNRS, IRIS)

Stem cell research has ushered in an area of hopes for a regenerative form of medicine. One of its most striking applications would be making eggs and sperm from stem cells, with the possibility of using them for human reproduction. This is the nascent field of in vitro gametogenesis (IVG). By making the generation of eggs and sperm independent from actual bodies, IVG would profoundly change the way humans and animals reproduce. This discussion will tackle the profound ethical and social questions raised by IVG by centering the conversation on current research in the field. We will explore the insights this research provides on human reproduction, and the questions that need to be considered for it to take place in a just manner. 

Ectogestation (Artificial Wombs) - 10 April 2025 (6pm-8pm)

No longer found only in the realm of science fiction, methods of artificial womb technology (ectogestation) are currently under development and are being tested in animal models. It is likely that human trials will take place within the next decade. The appearance of this technology on the horizon has raised significant ethical and social concerns. Many of these concerns are around areas of life which are already a source of significant disagreement, including: reproductive choices, the moral status of the fetus and newborn infant, care for extremely preterm infants and conceptions of personhood and parenthood. In the future, artificial womb technology may change the way that life starts for some people. Thinking about how it might work may also help us to better understand some difficult questions of definitions and norms around reproduction and the beginnings of life that we face today.

Complementary information and registration form.