Morally justifying oncofertility research.

Is research aimed at preserving the fertility of cancer patients morally justified? In response to this question, some people would resoundingly answer “yes.” Many oncofertility researchers and some survivors of cancer who are now infertile would probably react this way. But others might say “no,” in particular people who worry about the just distribution of scarce resources, the risks to patients and to their potential offspring of the relevant interventions [1], or pronatalist and other biases that seem to underlie this science. While I lean toward “no” myself, I recognize that the issue is complicated. I also believe that it must be confronted. Some people will try to dodge the issue by presuming that oncofertility research is justified, on the grounds that it promotes a basic right (to reproduce) or resembles research that our society has already condoned (i.e., research into other assisted reproductive technologies (ART)). But actually, there is no getting around the need to justify this research and to do so on moral as well as legal grounds. My concern specifically is with its moral justification. In my view, a sound moral justification for oncofertility research is missing from the literature on oncofertility. Rather than fill this gap myself – which I think is impossible to do in a short space and which is also a job for an advocate, not a skeptic, of the science – my goal in what follows is to explain what I think such an argument must look like.