Tied up in nots over genetic parentage.

re we ever going to do anything about assisted repro-duction? Fertilizing eggs in a dish to have children chafes because such a momentous event lacks a clear regulatory framework. Occasional scandals and now the prospect of embryonic screening bring on the shivers. The temptation is to do something now before greater problems develop. Fukuyama and Furger would create a whole new federal agency to occupy the field. Call me a noninterventionist lib-ertarian, but I suggest that we do nothing special—certainly not creating a national agency or commission. Why not just let our mixed public-private regulatory system, with its strong common law tradition, handle it nonsystematically, as it has for years? " Muddling through " is a respectable policy option, especially for a pragmatic people faced with irreconcilable moral quandaries. This nonsystem " system " has served well to date—even if not all the time and never perfectly—both in other contexts and for assisted reproduction. There is no convincing reason it will not work for the issues now on deck in reprogenetics: genetic screening of embryos, germline gene therapy, harvesting stem cells from embryos created by in vitro fertilization or somatic cell nuclear transfer, and the other edge technologies looming ahead. F ukuyama and Furger are policy wonks to the core. They think that only a new governmental body can handle adequately the complications of a reprogenetic future. With great aplomb (and maybe glee), they draft out the bones and sinews of a new independent commission to handle such matters, connecting it with proper respect both for executive appointment authority and for democratic responsiveness. They want an official body, informed by a " permanent advisory board " and a system of deliberative consultative panels, to guide us through the ethical ravines that they see arising in the future. They impress with their wide and deep knowledge of regulatory agencies and the various ways to combine responsiveness and representation with expertise and independence. It sounds great on paper, but I remain unconvinced that there is big enough game to be bagged to justify all the effort needed to make the scheme work. They define the domain of concern as " medical practices related to human reproduction and research activities involving reproductive tissues " and list under " general ethical principles " six familiar areas of concern: children's well-being and health, access to assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs), women's well-being and health, informed consent, …