You might think that the infertility community has nothing in common with the ProChoice community, but you would be very wrong. Both groups risk access to reproductive health care if the numerous personhood bills pending in various states are actually passed. If you haven’t already run across these personhood bills, they all have in common [...]

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 [...]

We’ve all heard the expression, “You are what you eat”, meaning that good dietary habits will positively influence how you look and feel overall. But did you expect that the food you eat might have an effect on your sperm? Two new studies presented at this week’s American Society for the Study of Reproduction (ASRM)’s [...]

One of the routine questions that patients get asked when they submit a semen sample for analysis is “Have you taken any medications in the last 60 days?” The 60 days is relevant because it takes around 60-70 days for a sperm cell to be produced and so exposures that occurred two months earlier may [...]

With technology comes new opportunities and always new ethical questions. I subscribe to a professional andrology list-serve group to keep up to date on the sperm side of things. Most of the topics are usually medically oriented  for male urologists but recently there’s been a pretty animated discussion about the ethics of posthumous sperm retrieval [...]

My posts have been fewer lately but but this morning I found a patient comment that tugged me back to the blog. On an old post, Wishing for a Happy Father’s Day, Elizabeth left me this comment and question: “I miss your insightful posts. Here’s a post idea: IVF after pregnancy. Need to wait awhile [...]

Today I had an inquiry from a student who is writing about access to infertility treatments and the role of insurance coverage to increase access to infertility treatments. Her inquiry got me thinking about one exception to the pretty universal denial of coverage for fertility treatments- the cancer diagnosis. As many of you know from [...]

Harvard scientist Jon Tilly proposed a radical new idea about how eggs are produced that called for the existence of ovarian stem cells which could continually produce new eggs. Stem cells are accepted as essential to sperm production in males. In men, the sperm stem cells (called spermatogonia)  produce daughter cells that either make the [...]

In their study, “Serum unconjugated bisphenol A concentrations in women may adversely influence oocyte quality during in vitro fertilization” published in Fertility & Sterility , University of California researchers reported a direct link between detectable amounts of the chemical Bisphenol A (BPA) in IVF patient’s blood and reduced egg quality. BPA is a well-known endocrine [...]

The sad news that Elizabeth Edwards, estranged wife of politician John Edwards,  died this week at the age of 61 after a long struggle with cancer made me reflect on several issues related to IVF. Mrs. Edwards family life was complicated in that she and John had four children, two early in the marriage  and [...]