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Glass Butterflies
GLASS BUTTERFLIES (February 2008) is the third novel of Ludmila Filipova. It was already nominated for the second selection on the European literary contest “Prix du Livre Europeen 2008”. And it is the only foreign novel nominated for the American literary award “Hidden River 2009”. Moreover, the novel was nominated for the second selection on the Bulgarian literary contest “Novel of the year 2009”.

One of the most powerful features of the novel is that it attempts to reveal for the first time in the literature the world scale and risks of uncontrolled trading with genetic material, millions human embryos and advanced reproductive technologies. In a drama-thriller story the novel unravels the details around the practice of trading with live embryos. Currently there are 5 million frozen embryos worldwide. There are real factories that produce and sale people each day. Some of them commissioned. Some will remain in nitrogen for many years. Many of them are siblings or twins. The book is due to be published in Turkey and Serbia. And already published in Russia from the biggest Russian publishing house AST (Olymp branch company) GLASS BUTTERFLIES is the second novel of Ludmila published in Russia and Ludmila Filipova was the first Bulgarian writer published in Russia after 20 years.

Millions of human embryos are produced in human fabrics and sold through clinics and cryo - banks. They are stockpiled just like any other merchandise: cars, diamonds or clothes. The difference is that an embryo is a future human being, bringing to life a DNA formula with hundreds of years of history and hundreds of years of future. The terrible risks involved with the uncontrolled production, exchange and storage of human beings for decades prior to sale and copying their DNA for cloning has already produced shocking results. Medical clinics sell dreams; human beings buy other human beings from a catalogue, some of them with DNA too outdated and unsuitable for the modern world; dozens of twins living in neighboring cities unaware of each other’s existence. Such twins can meet and even fall in love. This problem is hidden from public awareness by the unwillingness of both patients and healthcare professionals to speak openly of the issue because of shame and the general social unacceptability of the subject. But the issue has already reached massive proportions which are gradually changing our world and the course of evolution. Yet the most frightening aspect of the novel Glass Butterflies is that it is based on actual events.

The novel is an amazing mix of real stories of people, scientific facts and theories, so as some fiction invention to help us to fly trough the time and to see the shocking results of human actions Today.

The story is inspired by the drama of a real family which in the end of 90s was looking for an alternative way to pay its expensive in-vitro procedure in order to become loving parents.

Ludmila tells the story of two girls and a boy created from embryos of one and same biological parents, but born by three different mothers. It happens in three different families, and in three different countries. Mothers have become pregnant as a result of the method of assisted reproduction. Again a terrible crime brings them together, which the investigator PAVEL VALCHANOV is trying to disentangle.

Blending the authentic human destinies, scientific facts and fiction stories Ludmila Filipova considers even issues, related to the future of humanity in the span of evolution. In her novel she touches also upon a number of risks related to the fact that people from all over the world exchange in unlimited quantities genetic material. Future babies have been already chosen from catalogues in luxurious clinics for fertilization according to the list of qualities and disabilities they had inherited by DNK. Mothers are fertilized with embryos frozen before many decades and then returned to life in an environment for which their DNK is irrelevant…

It sounds like science fiction but it is not.

We are trying to steal God’s functions and to take in our own hands the destiny of our biological specie. However do we know the direction? Is it possible for a man to change himself the course of his evolution? And if the answer is YES, then what way we are going to?

Several facts behind the story:

  • The market of genetic material already offers everything. In Internet each and every woman could make a choice of fertilizing material sorted out by genetic characteristics, IQ, and traits of character carried by the semen donor. Specialized agencies are seeking and offering worldwide ova and frozen human embryos.
  • In early 2006 in Texas the first official factory for sale of human embryos was opened. Frozen оr just generated according to the requirements of the client samples are on sale.
  • By the end of 2007 some 4,5 million embryos were stored in liquate nitrogen in fertility clinics around the world. Their number continues to increase each month. Some of them will be killed, others will be used in experiments, the third will be used for the production of human organs and stem sells, all the other will be sold out, or donated to childless families. Among them there are a lot of potential brothers and sisters.
  • The number of childless families worldwide is growing dramatically each year.
  • Yet in the end of the XX century the cloning of mammals is theoretically and applicably proven to be possible. It was practiced thousands times.  From 2007 in UK it is legal to create embryo of human-cow.
  • The profits of the clinics or assisted human reproduction are steadily on the rise with each consequent year. Only in the US in the industry of the artificial fertilization there are circulating annually billions of dollars.
 
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