The on-line version of Fertility and Sterility published a review of 56 previous studies; “Birth defects in children Conceived by in vitro fertilization and intracytoplasmic sperm injection: a meta-analysis”on April 3, 2012, epub ahead of print. This study found an increased relative risk (RR) of congenital birth defects reported in children conceived with either IVF [...]

Maybe it’s just the 24/7 political news cycle in an election year making me cranky, but the current drive to repeal women’s rights on various issues and reproductive rights specifically makes me want more protective regulation for infertility patients, not less. The US Healthcare system is one of the most contentious areas of debate in [...]

Today I had this  question from a patient,  “How much info should you expect to get in terms of follow-up from your RE and lab after a failed cycle?”  She was expressing her frustration that all the follow-up she had was that they would try ICSI next time because she had zero percent fertilization in [...]

According to the Bionews report Frozen embryo ‘adoption’ scheme to lose US government funding,   the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will not request funding  for continued support of the Embryo Adoption Awareness Campaign and the program will be discontinued in 2013.  This Campaign was created in 2007 by Nightlight Christian Adoptions, a Pro-life [...]

I have written before on the topic of medical tourism, the practice of seeking medical care oversees because it is less expensive or because you can only get the services you want overseas and not in your home country. I blogged about this in two previous posts , Affordable IVF and Global Outsourcing of IVF. [...]

IVF frequently upends old law that existed before IVF was created. Original laws regarding who is eligible for social security survivor benefits may be a case in point. The 1939 Social Security Act states that Social Security survivor’s benefits go to any child of a covered deceased individual. To further complicate things, social security looks [...]

When is surrogacy not really surrogacy? The recent legal case of attorney Theresa Erickson sheds considerable light on at least one way to manipulate and defraud both intended parents and gestational carriers and redefine surrogacy as baby-selling for personal gain. Most IVF programs in the US will produce embryos for couples (usually using their own [...]

A recent news story out of Fort Worth Texas, Parents Sue Cryogenic Center Over Child’s Cystic Fibrosis ,brought to light a risk that many patients using sperm donors should be aware of. More importantly, it exposes the weak oversight of reproductive technology by both state and federal agencies that are charged with protecting the public’s health. [...]

Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) of IVF embryos has moved into the mainstream of reproductive medicine. Genetic testing of IVF embryos for known genetic diseases allows the clinician to identify, before implantation, those embryos that carry the genetic mutation for disease. Using this information, patients can choose to have transferred only embryos without the disease gene. [...]

The American Society for Reproductive Medicine has a Ethics Committee which issues recommendations regarding various ART medical practices. Most recently, they published “Disclosure of medical errors involving gametes and embryos”  If this link doesn’t work, you can download a PDF copy for yourself directly from www.asrm.org. In this article, the Ethics Committee generally advocates for [...]