Ethical Issues Related to Birth of IVF Octuplets : Not a Cause for Celebration, Doctors Warn

 
Two newspapers recently published two opinion pieces examining the ethical issues surrounding the recent birth of octuplets to a California woman, Nadya Suleman, who reportedly underwent fertility treatments. Summaries appear below.
 


~ Arthur Caplan, Philadelphia Inquirer: “Something has gone terribly wrong when a 33-year-old single woman — who has no home of her own, no job [...]

Birth of first UK baby screened for genetic breast cancer

The first baby to be screened for alterations in the breast cancer-causing gene, BRCA1, was born last week. The child was at risk from inheriting the gene from her father, who has women in three generations of his family who have been diagnosed with breast caner in their twenties as a result of inheriting the [...]

Fate of surplus frozen embryos : a difficult decision

Many infertility patients with unused frozen embryos are dissatisfied with the common options offered to them, such as donating to another couple or discarding the embryos, according to a study to be published Thursday in Fertility and Sterility, the New York Times reports. It is estimated that more than 400,000 embryos are frozen at clinics [...]

America’s Funniest Surrogate Stories Contest Winner

The following was selected as the Winning Entries in America’s Funniest Surrogate Stories Contest: Grand Prize Winner:
“I’ll never forget our meeting in Virginia… My IM picked me up from the airport to take me for my sonogram and, after that, out to lunch at the local shopping mall. As we pulled into the parking lot, [...]

Multiple joys: Three gynecologists — and moms — are personal experts on twins and triplets

Talk about multitasking. Of the eight female obstetrician-gynecologists who deliver babies at Sutter Roseville Medical Center in Roseville, California, three are the mothers of multiples.
 
Dr. Amy Riley’s triplets, Julia, Vivian and Alec are now four years old. Dr. Anna Almonte’s twin daughters, Katherine and Elizabeth, are 6. And Dr. Jackie Ho gave birth to the [...]

Couple Celebrate Their Miracle Baby

A mother has become the first in Britain to have a successful pregnancy after receiving a double organ transplant.
Emma Smith, 37, from Little Wymondley gave birth to healthy 6lb baby Oliver at the end of last month despite having a donor pancreas and kidney. 
It is extremely rare because anti-rejection drugs, which must be taken for [...]

Bariatric Surgery Before Pregnancy Benefits Moms, Babies

Women who get pregnant after having weight-loss surgery have a lower risk of maternal and newborn complications than pregnant women who are obese, according to U.S. researchers who analyzed 75 studies.
Data from those studies showed that bariatric surgery in the United States increased by 800 percent between 1998 and 2005 (from 12,480 to 113,500). Women [...]

Easing fertility through lifestyle changes

Couples who have been trying to conceive can easily grow impatient when their plans don’t go exactly, or as easily, as planned. But before concluding that they may have certain fertility problems or that they need fertility drugs or treatments, it is good to first take a closer look into the way they are leading [...]

No more Baby Manjis in India, draft law on Surrogacy ready

New laws to regulate assisted reproductive technology in India will be introduced to Parliament later this year. The text of the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Bill 2008 was published last month by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) for public comment. The bill aims to regulate surrogacy arrangements in the country where regulation is [...]

Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI)

Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) is an in vitro fertilization procedure in which a single sperm is injected directly into an egg; this procedure is most commonly used to overcome male infertility problems. With conventional IVF, one can expect approximately 75% of the oocytes (eggs) to fertilize if they are healthy and the sperm parameters are [...]