Rewinding Your Biological Clock: Motherhood Late in Life

""Assisted reproductive technology (ART), where an egg and a sperm can be removed from the human body, joined together in a biological marriage, and replaced in a uterus (the mother's or another woman's), has greatly expanded the scope of human reproduction."" Reproductive endocrinologist and ART specialist Paulson, assisted by Sachs, focuses predominantly on one aspect of ART, the artificial fertilization of a donor egg and its subsequent transplant into the prepared uterus of a post-menopausal woman. While providing the medical background behind ART procedures in chapters filled with technical information, the authors try to explore the human, emotional side in alternating chapters that tell the fictional account of Sarah, a 48-year-old woman desperately seeking a child. Unfortunately, this device proves ineffective, as the fictitious dialogue all too obviously provides the opportunity to raise technical issues in a colloquial setting. The explanatory chapters, on the other hand, written from Paulson's perspective, do provide a broad overview explaining how it is possible for women in their 50s and 60s to give birth, albeit to a child arising from someone else's egg. The final chapter, however, devoted to ethical issues, proves a disappointment that provides little analysis of the wide range of thorny problems associated with ART. Author tour. Agent, Al Zuckerman, Writer's House. (Dec.)