Heath Robinson (Rube Goldberg, for American readers) could perhaps draw a diagram that made sense of the legislative and regulatory structure Bonnicksen describes in this book. However Heath Robinson machines, no matter how baroque, actually achieve something: in the four years covered by this contemporary history the American “system” seems to have achieved very little. That we have not yet (at the time of writing) seen a confirmed cloned child produced in the USA or elsewhere does not seem due in any part to the activity that Bonnicksen describes. This is not a history of America’s progress towards crafting a policy; it is an account of its failure to make one.

The bulk of this book details the legal and regulatory responses to emerging reproductive technology in America following the announcement of the birth of Dolly the cloned lamb in 1997. The remainder gives an overview of the position of other countries around the world, and a brief concluding chapter outlines the options open to the US in the future. Lest anything that follows might suggest otherwise, I found this book interesting and informative, and …