Babies in bottles: twentieth-century visions of reproductive technology

579 Pages·1994·2.39 MB·English

by  Susan Merrill Squier

BABIES IN BOTTLES
Twentieth-Century Visions
of Reproductive Technology
Susan Merrill Squier
Rutgers University Press
New Brunswick, New Jersey

Babies in Bottles : Twentieth-century
title:
Visions of Reproductive Technology
author: Squier, Susan M.
publisher: Rutgers University Press
isbn10 | asin: 0813521165
print isbn13: 9780813521169
ebook isbn13: 9780585020242
language: English
Human reproductive technology--Social
subject aspects, Human reproductive technology in
literature.
publication date: 1994
lcc: RG133.5.S98 1994eb
ddc: 306.4/61
Human reproductive technology--Social
subject: aspects, Human reproductive technology in
literature.
Copyright © 1994 by Susan Merrill Squier
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Squier, Susan M. (Susan Merrill)
Babies in bottles : twentieth-century visions of reproductive
technology / Susan Merrill Squier.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-8135-2116-5 (cloth) ISBN 0-8135-2117-3 (pbk.)
1. Human reproductive technologySocial aspects.
2. Human reproductive technology in literature. I. Title.
RG133.5.S98 1994
306.4'61dc20 94-10154
CIP
British Cataloging-in-Publication information available
Illustration 1 reproduced courtesy of Tony Bela, The Sunday Mail,
Brisbane, Australia.
Illustration 2 copyright © 1989 by the New York Times Company.
Reproduced by permission.
Illustration 4 reproduced by permission of The Putnam Publishing
Group from Mutation by Robin Cook. Copyright © 1989 by Robin
Cook.
Illustration 9 reproduced from Test Tube Conception by Carl Moore
and Ann Westmore (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1984).
Copyright © 1983 by Carl Moore and Ann Westmore.
To Gowen, Caitlin, and Toby
Intrepid Travelers
and to Howard,
connoisseur of slime molds,
bats, and the Wall Street Journal
Page vii
Contents
Illustrations ix
Preface and Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: Reproductive Technology and 1
Representation
one Babies in Bottles and Tissue-Culture Kings: The Role 24
of Analogy in the Development of Reproductive
Technology
two The Ectogenesis Debate and the Cyborg: Imaging the 63
Pregnant Body
threeSex Selection, Intersexuality, and the Double Bind of 100
Female Modernism
four Embryos Are Like Photographic Film: RTs and VTs in 133
the Fiction of Aldous Huxley
Page viii
five From Guinea Pigs to Clone Mums: 168
Naomi Mitchison's Parables of Feminist Science
Notes 201
Index 251
Page ix
Illustrations
1. Ectogenesis 2
2. Baby in Bottle 3
3. Babies in BottleGeek Love 6
4. Test-Tube BabyMutation 9
5. Baby in BottleThe Water-Babies 30
6. Tom "All Over Prickles" 34
7. Axolotl Experiment Story 37
8. The "Machine Man of Ardathia" 45
9. Incubator 46
10. Alexis Carrel's Tissue-Cultured Heart 47
11. The "Ultra-Elixir of Youth" 48
12. The "Home of the Living Fetishes" 53
13. Haldane and Huxley as Fish 93
14. Placental Chamber 98
15. Charlotte Haldane 106
16. Charlotte and J.B.S. Haldane 130
17. Saunes Bairos: The Cast 177

Page xi
Preface and Acknowledgments
Researching and writing Babies in Bottles took five years, and
extended to three continents. It is with great pleasure that I
acknowledge some of the people and institutions who helped along
the way. Although origins are always mysterious, and intellectual
origins no less so than biological ones, two collaborative experiences
were important germinal moments for this book. The experience of
working with Helen Cooper and Adrienne Munich on our co-edited
collection Arms and the Woman: War, Gender, and Literary
Representation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1989) first led me to think about the modern and postmodern
disjunction between sexuality and reproduction. Then Lou Charnon-
Deutsch's translation of Laura Freixas extraordinary intrauterine
parable "Mi mama me mima" ("My Mama Spoils Me") sensitized me
to the cultural prominence of fetal images, catalyzing my essay "Fetal
Voices: Speaking for the Margins Within,'' an early foray into an issue
whose modernist precursor I explore in this book. Angela Ingram and
Daphne Patai were early supporters of my work on Charlotte Haldane,
for which I thank them. I thank Jane Marcus for giving me the
opportunity to present work in progress with Barbara Katz Rothman at
the Forum of Technologies of Birth held at the Graduate Center of the
City University of New York, and I thank Elaine Hoffman Baruch and
Rayna Rapp for their generous responses to other work in progress.
Finally, the Humanities Institute at Stony Brook provided crucial
intellectual stimulation and good fellowship. In particular, I want to
thank members of the faculty seminar "Motherhood and
Representation" led by E. Ann Kaplan; participants in the Humanities
Institute Conference "Reproductive

Page xii
Technologies: Narrative, Gender, Culture"; and members of Jennifer
Terry's "Bodies" seminar, especially Ira Livingston.
For the administrative leave that made my research year in London
possible, I thankJ. R. Schubel, Don Ihde, and David Sheehan. For
research help and other support in London, I wish to thank Karl Miller
of University College, London; Lesley A. Hall, of the Wellcome
Institute for the History of Medicine; Dennis Doughan of the Fawcett
Library; and the staffs of the D.M.S. Watson Library of University
College, London, the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine
Library, and the Manuscript Room of the National Library of
Scotland. Robert Young, of Free Associations Books, was a splendid
guide to the new territory of science studies. Anna Werrin helped me
understand, and gain access to, the records of the Human Fertilisation
and Embryology Debate in Parliament, and I thank her for her
insider's perspective on the House of Commons. I thank Jacqueline
Rose and Rachel Bowlby for the opportunity to present part of
Chapter 1 at the Cultural Studies Program of the University of Sussex
on 6June 1990, and Miriam Diaz-Diocaretz and the organizers of the
International Conference on Women, Culture, and the Arts in
Dubrovnik on 16-20 April 1990, for the opportunity to present part of
Chapter 3. For social as well as intellectual sustenance in London I
wish to thank Marina Benjamin, Madeline and Ian Crispin, Lesley
Hall, Maggie Humm, Bonnie Kime Scott, and Eve Stoddard. For
helping me track down many of the rare texts this book required, I
thank booksellers Elizabeth Crawford, of London, and Ian Patterson,
of Cambridge, England. Finally, I thank Naomi Mitchison for her
generous support of my project and for her inspiring example of a
complex, scientifically informed, and scientifically critical feminism.
A Fulbright Senior Research Scholar fellowship made possible my
research year in Melbourne, Australia, and I am grateful to the
Fulbright organization for the chance to consider feminist issues from