Ruth Institute Blog

By Jennifer Lahl, CBC President

Pacific Reproductive Center (PRC) of Southern California (AKA, the reproductive tourist capital of the world) has just announced the opening of an on-site laboratory with breakthrough technology that has the ability to analyze all 46 chromosomes (23 from the mother and 23 from the father) of a human embryo within 24 hours. It is billed as “fresh hope for would-be moms at risk of miscarriages and birth defects.” Read more…

Great article. From start to finish.

by Barbara Kay

A Canadian provincial court rules that gamete donors may not hide their identity.

The British Columbia Supreme Court struck down provisions of the Adoption Act and Adoption Regulations on Thursday. They argued that the legislation denies offspring of sperm and egg donors (gamete donors) their Charter rights, which ought to be equal to those of adopted children with regard to knowledge of the identity and medical history of their biological parents. Read more…

by Elizabeth Marquardt 05.19.2011

A big, big day!

See Karen’s post below.

Here is the Vancouver Sun article:

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…

An antitrust suit is filed against America’s fertility clinics

FERTILITY assistance is a big and profitable business in America. Those needing help to conceive—infertile couples, older women, gay men using surrogate birth mothers—may be charged steep prices by the mostly privately owned clinics. In turn the clinics pay egg donors fees that often run into thousands of dollars. In contrast, an egg donor in Britain can legally be compensated by only the same amount as someone serving on jury duty—£61.28 (just under $100) a day. Read more…

Jennifer Lahl, CBC President—and Executive Producer, Director, and Writer of Eggsploitation—recently interviewed Linda about her egg donation experience.

Lahl: You told me you saw the ad on Craigslist’s posting by the fertility center, looking for Asian egg donors. What made you answer this ad?

Linda: I thought I fit the description very well: Great grades, college educated, great looks, and genetics. The list could go on for all the ego reasons I would want to do this. Read more…

from Yahoo News:
France’s top court refused Wednesday to allow French citizenship for 10-year-old twin girls born to a surrogate mother in the United States, in a ruling that affirmed France’s legal ban on surrogacy.

In a case straddling international legal rights and bioethics, the Court of Cassation ruled a California county went too far by ruling that a French couple are legally the twins’ parents.

Keep reading…

“Surrogacy is also banned outright in most European countries, including Germany, Spain, Finland, Italy, and Switzerland. But the French have articulated the reasons for this rejection most eloquently”: 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…

Yet more complications arising from people playing God.

By Stephen Clark

Melissa Amen conceived her 3-year-old daughter, Kayah, seven days after Kayah’s father died of cancer.

“It’s my miracle,” the 28-year-old Nebraska resident told FoxNews.com. Melissa and her husband, Joshua, struggled for two years to have a child before she conceived through intrauterine insemination. Joshua had stored his sperm in a bank in case treatments for his cancer rendered him sterile. They were planning to raise a family together despite his three-year battle with cancer. Read more…

by Paul Miller

The German parliament is debating a ban on whether to legalise screening embryos for unwanted genetic traits.

Not every innovation is beneficial. The 1997 film Gattaca is a dark tale of what can happen when a society genetically engineers its offspring. The story is told through the eyes of a human who was conceived the natural way – without having been screened for genetic defects – and thus illegally. Read more…

(March 15, 2011) Dr J traveled up to the Los Angeles area for a screening of “Eggsploitation,” Jennifer Lahl’s documentary on the fertility industry–in particular, the way egg donors are used by the process.  (Jennifer Lahl is one of Ruth Institute’s academic advisors.)  She gives a short talk after the screening but before the author’s Q&A.

Listen here.

More information on “Eggsploitation” is available here.

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…

Occasionally on this blog, same-sex ‘marriage’ proponents have challenged those of us who would seek to protect the institution of marriage to explain why, if we truly believe that (part of) the public purpose of marriage is to attach parents to their children, we nevertheless maintain that even a man and woman who are (for whatever reason) incapable of procreating together, or who simply have no desire or intention of doing so, should still be allowed – and even encouraged – to enjoy the benefits of married life. Read more…

On December 31st Diane Rehm (on NPR) rebroadcast a show about DNA Sequencing & Personal Genomics. (Yes, and I’m just now getting around to blogging about it…)

When they started taking comments and questions from listeners, the first caller hit on something that made me wonder how this rapidly developing technology is going to affect the future of Assisted Reproductive Technology for everyone.

From the transcript:

SUE
Good morning. I want to say that nobody has touched on reducing risk for future generations yet. I think this has broad ramifications for adoption law and closed records. Would you respond to that, please? 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…