Book Review: Freezing Fertility – Oocyte cryopreservation and the gender politics of ageing
Appeared in BioNews 1086
Freezing Fertility is a timely and powerful book about a technology that, even if it is only used by a small minority of women, nonetheless has the potential power to fundamentally alter the way we see not just reproduction, but the female lifecourse more broadly.
In following the egg from the body to the freezer, and onwards to the IVF laboratory or to emerging transnational flows of eggs for reproduction and research, Dr van de Wiel analyses the discourses and practices of egg freezing, and the layered politics that surround them. Turns out that many of the challenges and debates around egg freezing are not new. Concerns around when and how women should have babies have long genealogies in debates around contraception, abortion and assisted reproduction and Dr van de Wiel skilfully connects this history to the future promises of egg freezing.
In the fall of 2016, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals was looking to expand. The Cambridge, Massachusetts–based company had therapies based on RNA interference (RNAi) technology in late-stage clinical testing for a handful of rare diseases, and wanted to establish a presence in Europe to better serve patients there. By the end of the following year, the company had opened offices in Maidenhead, UK; Zug, Switzerland; and Amsterdam, the Netherlands, to serve as its three European hubs.
Scouting for new locations in Europe, the company found Amsterdam particularly appealing, says Marco Fossatelli, Alnylam’s country manager in the Netherlands. Alnylam already had long-standing partnerships with three large academic medical centers in the Netherlands that had hosted some of the company’s Phase 3 trials. And Amsterdam checked all the right boxes: it has a highly skilled workforce and is easily accessible and navigable by public transportation. It also had a blossoming life sciences and healt