Setting the Stage

• Comments focus on the importance of recognizing thresholds and gateways in framing the challenges of emerging reproductive and genetic biotechnologies
• While technologies enhance human power they have previously used resources outside of the human body, genetic technologies involve science going within us.
• Genetics genie is out of the bottle to stay and challenges us to develop new "skill set" and new "took kit."
• We are challenged to develop new institutional processes and the responsible governance and policies they generate; new concepts like intergenerational accountability; a renewed emphasis on applying the precautionary principle; new collaborations between stakeholders from marginalized communities—indigenous peoples, the disabled and the differently abled, and racial, gender, economic, and social justice communities.
• While the gene age will provide many positive medical and scientific developments, it has already begun to impact multiple stakeholders.
• As stakeholders we have an interest in exerting a modulating influence based on goals and values other than the interests of the marketplace or the military.
• We are challenged to engage in a reflective process that examines multiple intersections of science, ethics, individual liberty, the interests of the marketplace, responsible governance, the public's access to spaces support open debate, social responsibility, intergenerational accountability, and sustainability of our genetic knowledge commons.
• Women's bodies, cells, tissues, ova—including totipotent embryonic stem cells, even DNA are integral to much of genetics based research and many genetic biotech applications.
• Women's bodies are a gateway to the manipulation of human genes, genetic sequences and processes related to in vitro, or the baby business, but also to in vivo, the red biotechnologies that are emerging as personal health and wellness products.
• Women's bodies offer the genetic blueprint for reproducing all human life.
• What will it mean for elites to own the genetic knowledge imbedded in all of us?
• Read New York Times bestseller The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot.
• Women's bodies are also containers for contract surrogacy; provide the ova that fuel the global ova trade, assisted human reproduction services and reproductive tourism.
• The issue of corporate proprietary ownership of women's genetic materials, sequences and processes bodes ill for women's right to bodily integrity.
• Civil society stakeholders confront serious ethical and equity challenges seeking to protect gains in democratic access for marginalized communities.