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 [...]

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. [...]

Every week, we field questions about using sperm donors from patients who can’t have a child unless they can use donor sperm and most buy sperm from a commercial sperm bank. They may be a married couple in which the man does not produce sperm or had a vasectomy that he doesn’t want to reverse [...]

Newsweek’s cover this week had an adorable baby with the headline, “You got your sperm where? How to get pregnant, fast, cheap -and in public“. Wow, talk about an eye grabber. In this article you meet a 40 year old virgin who calls himself a “donorsexual” and gives his sperm away (in a cup) to [...]

Washington state is considering a new bill that would make paying a gestational surrogate legal. Currently, surrogates in Washington could be compensated for expenses, but payment for gestational services is illegal. States vary widely in their legal perception of surrogacy. You can find a state by state description on the All about Surrogacy.com website. Many [...]

The Chicago Tribune published this story about a 61 year old woman who gave birth to her own grandson. Unconventional certainly, but clearly an act of love by a mother that allowed her daughter and son-in-law to have a biological child- her first grandchild. Her daughter and son-in-law had tried IVF for many years and [...]

The British Medical Journal published an article (27 January 2011) which shines a light on a rare and largely avoidable complication from IVF, namely death. Although extremely rare, the European study found more maternal deaths occurred in 100,000 IVF pregnancies (42) compared to non-IVF pregnancies (6). The causes of these IVF-related death were related to [...]

Happy New Year! I hope this new year is a year of resolution of infertility for each and every one of you who are suffering from infertility. As difficult as it is, infertility is not a permanent condition, but a life passage. Everyone with infertility moves on to parenting by some means or adapts to [...]