The FDA appears to be getting more serious about IVF program compliance with their regulations, specifically regarding whether a person is medically eligible to donate gametes. Used to be, you never or rarely found a warning letter to an IVF clinic but fairly recently, there were two issued, for a clinic in Florida  and one [...]

Anyone with a compassionate heart understands why couples want to have children and start families. Sometimes these couples need help from ART to conceive. Some of these couples may even need donated  gametes (eggs and/or sperm)  or embryos from non-related donors to establish a family.  The immediate focus for both ART providers and patients is [...]

Recently Dr. Craig Sweet of Sweet Fertility published a thought-provoking blog post entitled “Why Creating McEmbryos is Plain Wrong” which describes his misgivings with the alleged practices of another infertility clinic, California Conceptions, as reported in a recent LA Times article, “An Ethics debate over embryos on the cheap”. In the article, LA Times reporter [...]

Sometimes family members do much more to help with infertility treatments than provide emotional support and advice. Some family members may donate gametes or carry a pregnancy for a relative. This act of generosity can make the difference for some couples but also has the potential to cause family rifts if entered into without sufficient [...]

As an embryologist by training and experience, my focus is usually on the technical aspects of IVF. But when I become aware of unintended consequences arising from high tech reproduction, I am forced to reconsider the status quo of how we provide assisted reproductive services to patients. I have been following a heated discussion regarding [...]

Craig Sweet, MD, a reproductive endocrinologist, recently published a thought provoking article which argues for reducing the minimum recommended age for egg donation from 21 (as ASRM Guidelines recommend) to 18. You can read his entire piece here. He argues persuasively that women of 18 years (and younger) are able to make decisions about their [...]

A recent Huff Post story caught my eye ,”Sperm Donation Lawsuit: Woman Sues FDA Over Sperm Donation Regulations (VIDEO)” . The facts of the story are this: A woman and her female partner desire to have a child together. Obviously, they require sperm to produce a child. They feel that the FDA required sperm-testing regulations [...]

Now for something a little different. Usually, I talk about the “how-to” of donor conception but the real heavy-lifting comes after the fact. Most IVF programs who offer third-party conception options (donor sperm, donor egg or embryo) typically encourage or require their patients to consider psychological counseling so that they have an opportunity to consider [...]

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 [...]