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…
Wow. Powerful title.
by Michael Cook
Is it high-tech child abuse to rob children of their biological heritage?
A 51-year-old Michigan man may have fathered as many as 400 children by donating sperm to an IVF clinic between 1980 and 1994. At the time Kirk Maxey saw this as a way to pay his way through medical school and to help infertile women. “You would get a personal phone call from a nurse saying, ‘The situation is urgent! We have a woman ovulating this morning. Can you be here in a half hour?’,” he told Newsweek last year. 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…
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?
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/
Jared Yee, BioEdge.org
The successful fertilisation of an egg using biological material from two women may have moved the world closer to three-parent babies. Researchers at St Mother Hospital in Kitakyushu, Japan, have experimented with repairing the damaged eggs of older women by using eggs from younger donors. The usefulness of this process is disputed. Some doctors say it could improve chances of fertilisation and prevent genetic defects; others worry that the DNA of three people might lead to genetic problems. Read more…
Michael Cook, BioEdge.org
IVF in Britain is a 500 million pound industry, so it’s surprising that no one had ever organised one before: a fertility trade show. The Guardian described the London event on November 6 and 7 as an “Ideal Home Exhibition for making babies”, although its reporter, Emma Cook, confessed that “it doesn’t make one feel entirely easy seeing big business tap such an emotive market.” Read more…
Jared Yee, BioEdge
An Australian woman who was the world’s first mother of two sets of quadruplets has given birth to twins. Dale and Darren Chalk are now the parents of 11 children under the age of 7 – two sets of quads, one set of twins and two singletons. (One of the second set of quads died.) All of the children were conceived with donor sperm. Read more…
Michael Cook BioEdge
While the mistakes of British fertility clinics are going to be placed on a public register, in the US lawsuits are needed to bring them to light. Two scandals have been in the news in the last couple of weeks.
In New Orleans, Ochsner Hospital has shut the doors of its IVF clinic because the embryos of as many as 100 patients had been mislabelled or destroyed despite safeguards that should have included bar-coding, color-coding and labeling. Outside experts have been brought in to audit all of the clinic’s work, all the way back to 2003. No embryos had been implanted in the wrong woman, says the hospital. Read more…
by Michael Cook
From now on serious mistakes in UK IVF clinics can be scrutinised by the public. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority says that it will post inspection reports on its website in an effort to make fertility treatment more transparent. The reports will include the name of the clinic involved, brief details of the incident, and the seriousness of the consequences. It will not be possible to identify the patient. Read more…
If society pays the costs for creating test-tube babies, we also have to accept the ethical responsibility.
The Ontario Expert Panel on Infertility and Adoption recently released its report, titled “Raising Expectations,” which describes the current state of Ontario’s adoption and assisted reproduction systems and makes detailed recommendations. Read more…
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