Routledge releases medical anthropologist Diane Tober’s groundbreaking study of human egg donors this week, cracking open the conversations about IVF, women’s reproductive health, rights to bodily autonomy, and parenting before an important presidential election. Eggonomics: The Global Market in Human Eggs and the Donors Who Supply Them is both timely and jaw-dropping in its findings and implications. In February 2024, the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) where Diane Tober is a tenured professor, paused in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments after an Alabama Supreme Court ruling which was later overturned. This is the first study to examine the experiences of egg donors. What happens when people are reduced to products? By pulling back the clinical curtain on the multi-billion-dollar per year global egg industry, that is the central question which Eggonomics seeks to address. Tracing the emotional and physical journeys egg donors embark upon as suppliers of valuable commodities, this book reveals uncomfortable realities at the heart of the industry. Donors ― and the eggs they provide ― are absolutely essential to helping others create the families of their dreams. But not all clinics treat their donors as well as their paying patients, and many donors suffer as a result. Technological innovations allow the egg donation industry to expand, fueling the private equity incursion into fertility medicine, turning once-private clinics into highly profitable, multinational conglomerates. Drawing upon international anthropological fieldwork, Eggonomics reveals the clinical spaces where egg donor’s bodies are tested, prodded, and poked for ever-increasing sums of profit, eugenic forces drive donor…

Our ideas about families have certainly undergone significant changes over the past couple decades, a shift that author, filmmaker, and anthropologist Diane Tober has been studying the past twenty years. Her new book Romancing the Sperm: Shifting Biopolitics and the Making of Modern Families chronicles the shifting landscape of modern families and Rutgers University Press will release it on November 5. “In Romancing the Sperm, Diane Tober explores the intersections between sperm donation and the broader social and political environment in which ‘modern families’ are created and regulated. Through intimate stories from her informants, this book provides a captivating read for anyone interested in family and kinship, genetics and eugenics, and how ever-expanding assisted reproductive technologies continue to redefine what it means to be human.” In light of her impending book launch, I am excited to share my interview with medical anthropologist Diane Tober. Audrey Arnold: You have a degree in anthropology and you research egg and sperm donation. What inspires your passion for this subject? Diane Tober: I first got into this research while I was a graduate student in Medical Anthropology at UCSF in the 1990s. I was working as a research assistant on Prof. Gay Becker’s study exploring “Gender Differences in Response to Infertility,” which focused solely on married, heterosexual couples. At the same time, single women and lesbian couples called up to volunteer for the study, but were rejected because they didn’t meet the study requirements. In the 1990s, “infertility” wasn’t considered to be an issue for unmarried…

As the year begins to come to a close, the Thanksgiving holiday reminds me of how much light there is in my life. I live in a community that reads, celebrates books, and supports literary artists and libraries. Books are something I feel passionately about and I’m grateful to have made them my calling, my livelihood, in this chapter of my life. For her skills and talents as an editor, Jenna Goodman appears top of my gratitude list. The professionalism, support and enthusiasm Sharon Yntema, bookkeeper and blogger, brings to Swenson Book Development LLC is appreciated. I am tremendously grateful to Susan Tripp for the administrative and project support she gives to our clients and contacts. For two interns this year, Alanna Rieser and Samantha Kolb, I am fortunate. Chad Lieberman continues to provide excellent service in webhosting and website design/development for Swenson Book Development LLC and our clients. Bringing books into the world is tremendously satisfying and I owe everything to my extraordinary clients. Four new book releases this fall and three publishing contracts for clients in 2017. Several clients with tremendously promising projects to pitch this coming spring. And for all of you who have shared your writing and stories with me as work-in-progress, I am humbled by my luck in finding fascinating people doing honorable work with words. I am grateful to Linda J. Spielman, whose devotion to wildlife in upstate to New York I share. When she contacted me with an idea for a book—a book…