Ruth Institute Blog

About ten years ago, I set the goal for myself to perform a one-arm pullup.

Working diligently and using a variety of training techniques, I got very close to that goal.  Agonizingly close.  Despite years of effort, the feat eluded me.  Yet I never gave up.

Finally, I got the idea to radically restrict my carbohydrate intake, lose the belly I was developing and thereby increase my strength-to-weight ratio.  I cut out sugar, grain and other starchy foods.  Fifteen pounds came right off, and I was able to get my chin over the bar using one hand.  This makes me very happy.

You might ask, Ari, what the heck does this have to do with anything that the Ruth Institute stands for?  Are you just writing this to brag? Read more…

by Damian Adams

Social acceptance of commercial conception ignores all the hidden costs.

It is often said that we cannot put a price on happiness. However, for those who are medically or socially infertile, happiness has a dollar value. For the first time in history adults can use technology to create their babies, with the only restriction being their ability to pay. Read more…

by Terrence McKeegan Co-authored with Tyler Ament

WASHINGTON, April 27, 2011 (C-FAM) – Costa Rica must legalize in vitro fertilization or face penalties for alleged violations of human rights protected by international law, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

In 2000, the Costa Rican Constitutional Court ruled that IVF in the country was unconstitutional because it violated the right to life of the embryo.  Four years later, the Center for Reproductive Rights petitioned the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to accept a case claiming that the human rights of two Costa Rican couples were violated by the ban. Read more…

Yesterday there was a segment on NPR titled Taming The Twin Trend From Fertility Treatments. They talked about how various forms of ART have caused an increase in the incidence of twin pregnancies:

Twins, once a rarity to marvel over, are now a common part of American culture, thanks in large part to increased use of reproductive technology. Twins are conceived naturally just 2 percent of the time; for those who get pregnant with fertility treatments the rate is more than 40 percent.

They also discussed some of the health risks associated with twins: Read more…

Women undergoing egg retrieval undertake real yet poorly studied health risks.

To retrieve her eggs, a woman first takes one set of powerful synthetic hormones to shut down her ovaries, then another to hyperstimulate them to induce a yield of eggs many times the normal number.  Whether this is done as part of her own fertility treatment, or to donate eggs to another woman, or for medical research, the process is the same.

Pressures on young women to donate eggs are increasing.  AHB joins other groups calling for more and better studies of egg donor risks so that women may be offered a meaningful informed consent before agreeing to have their ovaries hyperstimulated and their eggs retrieved.  AHB calls for a national registry to track the health and well-being of women donating eggs, the prohibition of payment for egg donation, and a moratorium on egg donation for research until the long-term health risks are better understood. Read more…

From The Telegraph

The Government has asked the fertility watchdog to assess a controversial new “three-parent” treatment for IVF.

Scientists have been invited to advise whether the new “three-parent IVF” procedure should be approved to help couples affected by devastating conditions.

An expert panel from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) will consider its safety and effectiveness before reporting to Health Secretary Andrew Lansley. Read more…

Yet more evidence that Anonymous Sperm and Egg Donation is Over (and not soon enough, if you ask me).

newsweek.com:
Currently, in the United States, you need a license to sell a condo or cut hair in a salon, but not to broker human life. The $3 billion fertility industry goes largely unregulated, offering blank pages to those searching for information where the rest of us are free to access vital statistics of public record. “I’m not a treatment, I’m a person, and those records belong to me,” says Pratten.

On top of the serious risk of inbreeding and the medical and health concerns associated with anonymous sperm and egg donation, we all should be entitled to know our biological heritage for the sake of the effect it has on our self image and identity: Read more…

And what happened to the other embryos? And how will this child feel when he grows up and learns we was created through science, not conceived out of love, for the purpose of helping his siblings, not because he was wanted for his own sake. Talk about feeling used. I hope his parents can also afford his therapy. Even his name will serve as a constant reminder of his utilitarian purpose in life. Read more…

by Jared Yee

While only two women died as a result of having an abortion in Britain in 2007, seven died as a direct result of IVF between 2003 and 2005, obstetricians have noted in a recent BMJ editorial. This happened even though there are only a quarter the number of IVF cycles as abortions, according to Dr Susan Bewley, a consultant obstetrician at Guy’s and St Thomas NHS Foundation Trust in London. Read more…

CBC’s Jennifer Lahl and Wesley J. Smith are occasional writers for ToTheSource.org. Recently ToTheSource interviewed Jennifer.

To The Source: How did you become interested in egg donation? What brought this to your attention?

Jennifer Lahl: I became interested in it as a broader issue within the various reproductive technologies. I’ve been writing and speaking on reproductive technology for close to a decade, and through my work, egg donors in the U.S. have found me and contacted me to tell me their stories. These were women whose stories had a negative outcome, and the donors had nowhere to go. Also, being involved in the stem cell debates, I was concerned with the growing demand for human eggs which will be needed to do the research. Read more…

Robert Edwards’ IVF technique devalued the human embryo and contributed to infertility.

by Carolyn Moynihan

There is something quite ironic in this week’s award of the Nobel Prize to Robert Edwards for the development of human in vitro fertilisation. During decades in which the whole thrust of reproductive medicine was to render fertile women infertile for 99 per cent of the time, Dr Edwards and later his colleague Patrick Steptoe were perfecting techniques for turning infertile women into mothers. Read more…

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2010 has been awarded to Robert G. Edwards for the development of in vitro fertilization (IVF). Edwards is part of the famous Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards duo, who were partners in the lab for years, trying to fertilize a human egg and thus create an embryo outside of the body by means of IVF, which literally means “in glass.” Read more…

I was going to write something about the award of the Noble Prize in medicine to the developer of IVF. But my friend from Down Under, Carolyn Moynihan of Mercator Net said what I wanted to say:

There is something quite ironic in this week’s award of the Nobel Prize to Robert Edwards for the development of human in vitro fertilisation. During decades in which the whole thrust of reproductive medicine was to render fertile women infertile for 99 per cent of the time, Dr Edwards and later his colleague Patrick Steptoe were perfecting techniques for turning infertile women into mothers.

And yet these two grand projects are only apparently contradictory. Both pushed medicine away from its basic curative function and towards a social engineering role: efficient contraception would suppress bodily rhythms to make every child a wanted child; IVF would make wanted children appear even when the body was not fit to conceive. Read more…

Gotta love that headline.

by Mary Rose Somarriba

Jennifer Aniston’s big new movie made headlines this week—for flopping. The Switch, a romantic comedy about a forty-year-old single woman who wants a baby and chooses to be artificially inseminated, brought in embarrassingly low ticket sales of only $8.4 million on opening weekend. Hollywood reporters have tried to think of all number of reasons for why it flopped so badly, ranging from the myth of lazy August filmgoers to the theory that Aniston is a blockbuster buzzkill.

But the answer may be the story itself. Just four months ago, Jennifer Lopez’s film on the same subject, The Back-up Plan—which came out this week on DVD— opened to a low $12.2 million. As reporters Gregg Kilday and Kim Masters put it, “Artificial insemination, it turns out, is the new box-office poison.” Read more…

Crazy!

by Jared Yee

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) is once again under fire following a string of new IVF blunders. These have included losing embryos, placing them in the wrong woman, fertilising eggs with the wrong sperm, or, as reported in BioEdge in November, inadequately screening sperm later found to possess severe genetic abnormalities. Read more…

By ROSS DOUTHAT, New York Times

If you want to adopt a child in the United States, you’ll face an array of bureaucratic roadblocks and invasive interrogations. Adoption agencies will assess your finances, your relationships, and your fitness as a potential guardian. The interests of the child, not the desires of the would-be parent, will be treated as paramount throughout. Read more…

With all the talk on here about artificial insemination lately, I thought I’d throw this brief article in too.

by Jared Yee

Confused by claims and counter-claims about climate change? Can’t decide whether it’s your patriotic duty to be a sceptic or a true believer? Well, you have it easy. How about deciding whether IVF is good for a baby’s health or not? Three similar, but conflicting stories appeared in the media this week. Read more…

Babies conceived through IVF are at higher risk for disorders.  For my libertarian friends who read this blog, please notice the Hayekian strain to this issue.  Not only are there unintended consequences of human action, as F.A. Hayek warned. First, look at the physical problems of IVF, that no one anticipated:

Scientists have discovered that the DNA of babies conceived through IVF differs from that of other children, putting them at greater risk of diseases Read more…

Yet another example of how selfish people can be. So much for what’s best for the child. I want it, and I can get it, so I will. And of course the doctors aren’t willing to turn down a buck. So sad. Poor kids with moms who will likely die while the kids are in college. How kind. I’m willing to bet old women are doing this because their grown children are too selfish to provide grandchildren. And what 20-year-old wants to spend his time caring for his mom after her hip replacement surgery or while she’s dealing with dementia?

Michael Cook

Senior fertility specialists in the UK have rejected calls for an age cap on IVF eligibility. After 59-year-old Sue Tollefsen featured in a BBC documentary about her desire to get IVF in Britain so that she could give birth at 60, there were howls of indignation from the public. But doctors backed up Ms Tollefsen’s claim that she was fit to be a mother even though she would be 70 when her child was ten. “I agree there should be a cut-off point,” she told the London Times. “Perhaps 65 is too old, but I’m still so healthy I don’t see why I shouldn’t be treated.” Read more…

From this article we learn that there are even more problems with invitro fertilization and surrogacy than are common knowledge. Problems arise when playing God? Shocker!

Jared Yee, BioEdge.org

Different regulatory approaches to surrogacy in the US can result in legal tangles, according to a report in The New York Times Magazine. The “lax atmosphere” of surrogacy regulation “means that it is now essentially possible to order up a baby, creating an emerging commercial market for surrogate babies that raises vexing ethical questions.”

The Times gives three disturbing examples.

Continue reading: http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/8791/