The Reproductive Bioeconomy in Spain: Market design, regulatory challenges and policy issues

Vincenzo Pavone
Instituto de Políticas y Bienes Públicos, CSIC
Thursday, 14 July 2022 - 11:00

Last year, nearly 10 per cent of newborn babies in Europe have been born thanks to assisted reproduction techniques (ARTs). In Spain, about one third of them have been born thanks to egg donation schemes. It is no surprise thus, that the growing expansion of ARTs in Europe has been at the center of raging controversies on regulatory and ethical principles, on the one side, and on commercialization and exploitation on the other side, with special attention to the role played by individual motivations in egg donation. Much less studied remains the political economy aspects of this vastly expanding reproductive bioeconomy. Offering a long and deeply articulated overview of how the reproductive bioeconomy in Spain has evolved in the past ten years, this talk will highlight the main hotspots for fast and controversial technological, social and economic changes. Drawing from past and present studies, the talk will focus on exiting regulatory challenges and policy issues associated to market design, vitrification and egg banking as well as to the expanding possibilities offered by NGS (next generation sequencing) in the field of assisted reproduction, in general, and egg donation in particular. At the end, the talk will offer a glimpse about the imagined and imaginable futures of a global business and of a declining western population.
 

Place: 

Ciudad Politécnica de la Innovación
Edificio 8E, Acceso J, Planta 4ª (Sala Cambia. Cubo Verde)
Universidad Politécnica de Valencia | Camino de Vera s/n
Available on Microsoft Teams