An End to Creating Excess Embryos in IVF?
Jennifer Lahl has this piece up over at The Human Future. Dutch physicians have apparently pioneered a new IVF method with good efficiency rates--using only one egg! This means that women do not have to undergo hyper-ovulation, the potentially dangerous procedure in which women receive huge doses of hormones so that they will release 10-15 eggs. Women can die in rare cases from the procedure.
Let us hope this procedure becomes the norm. It would permit families with fertility troubles to have babies. It would do away with the ethical problem of having to store "excess embryos," which many scientists now see as so many harvestable crops, and it would be safer for the women undergoing treatment. A true, win, win, win.
Source: Human Reproduction 2006; 21: 2375-83
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 9:12 AM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
The type was a little hard to read on the linked piece. Did I understand correctly that they got the same pregnancy rate with this as with the hyperstimulation method? That's sort of amazing, because the hyperstimulation is supposedly "needed" (as is the creation of "extras") because of poor implantation rate. It said at the end something to the effect that there was a "favorable implantation rate" in the study. Could this mean that somehow they were getting better-than-usual implantation with eggs obtained in this way? What mechanism could account for that? It would be quite a development, and worth research in itself, if eggs produced by hyperstimulation were for some physical reason worse at implanting once fertilized than single-ovulation eggs.
From what I understand, and I haven't read the actual paper so let's be careful: they got a lower rate of transfer success, but a higher rate of implantation, so the overall rate of live births was about the same. AND the risks from hyper stimulation are all but eliminated.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home