Scary

Cultural attitudes and perceptions of IVF, formed in large part by the media, are long on images of darling IVF children and short on information about the impersonal IVF procedure itself, which is rarely—if ever—described in detail.

   

Here’s the basic process: oocytes, or human eggs (obtained surgically from the wife’s ovarian follicles in drug-induced, super-ovulated cycles) and prepared sperm (previously collected from the husband, usually through masturbation) are brought together in a petri dish in the laboratory. Fertilization, if it is successful, takes place in that dish in a lab—that is, outside the woman’s body and any act of sexual union between the couple hoping to conceive. Next, three or more blastocyst-stage (five-day old) embryos are placed in the uterus through a process called embryo transfer. Less robust-looking embryos are either destroyed or cryofrozen at -320 degrees Fahrenheit in liquid nitrogen for possible future implantation or use in embryo-destructive research.  

The average cost for a single, basic cycle of IVF in the US is about $12,000. Success rates, a hotly debated topic even within the ART industry, vary widely according to a number of factors, most notably the age of the woman...Today, after the birth of more than four million IVF children worldwide, the procedure is looked upon as commonplace, even routine...

IVF stories in the media, including TV reality shows, continue to generate good audience ratings. But in recent years a number of new, unscripted storylines have begun to emerge, revealing the darker, unsettling underbelly of the ART industry and its practices.

A sampling of these revelations includes: 

·         - Unemployed single mother Nadya Suleman of California gained worldwide notoriety in January 2009 as the “Octomom”—giving birth to eight IVF babies—after a Beverly Hills doctor transferred 12 human embryos to her uterus. It appears that Suleman’s children are the world’s longest-surviving set of octuplets. They joined the six children Suleman had already given birth to through previous IVF procedures. All 14 births were from the same physician, whose medical license was eventually revoked. Although a spokesman for the American Society of Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), the chief advocacy group of the ART industry, condemned the event as a violation of ASRM guidelines for embryo transfer, an Associated Press story revealed that less than 20 percent of IVF clinics in the US follow the guidelines, which do not carry the force of law. 

·         - The largely unknown practice known as “selective reduction” gained prominence through Washington Post journalist Liza Mundy’s book Everything Conceivable: How Assisted Reproduction is Changing Men, Women, and the World (2007). The book offered detailed descriptions of the reductions of multiples-pregnancies (twins, triplets, or more), in which the least viable-looking fetus (or fetuses) is aborted by sodium chloride injection. More recently, a New York Times Magazine cover story (August 11, 2011) highlighted selective reduction under the headline “The Two-Minus One Pregnancy,” recounting chilling explanations from IVF mothers of how they decided which of their fetuses to destroy. 

·         - The connection between sperm banks and IVF clinics drew scrutiny after an article titled “One Sperm Donor, 150 Offspring” appeared in the New York Times (September 5, 2011). In the article, writer Jacqueline Mroz chronicled the myriad potential health and ethical concerns surrounding sperm donation, including the case of one sperm donor who “fathered” 150 children (with more on the way), all of whom are half-siblings. The possibility that genes for rare diseases could be spread throughout the population and the increased odds of incest between half-sisters and half-brothers who live in close proximity to each other but are unaware of their blood relation are just some of the potential problems arising from a largely unregulated sperm-donation industry. 

·         - Two recent documentaries highlight other little-known health consequences of IVF. Eggsploitation  (2010), produced by the Center for Bioethics and Culture, earned high praise from across the political and cultural spectrum for exposing what the film calls the IVF industry’s “dirty little secret”—the hidden dangers and risks to the health of young women who “donate” eggs for use in IVF clinics, thus fueling the human-egg trade. The film was named Best Documentary at the 2011 California Independent Film Festival. Echoes of Our Choice (2010, Ignatius Productions) is a film by Michigan neonatologist Robin Pierucci documenting the largely ignored dangers of premature multiple births—birth defects and high mortality rates—that are common in IVF pregnancies, and devastating to unsuspecting parents. 

        

These and other revelations represent merely the tip of the IVF iceberg. With regulation of the IVF industry virtually nonexistent in the US, it is estimated that a stockpile of some 500,000 human embryos—labeled as “spares”—are now in a cryopreserved (frozen) state. Moving toward “designer babies,” IVF specialists are marketing and promoting the use of prenatal genetic diagnosis to scan and test chromosomes of IVF embryos, allowing for the elimination of those nascent human beings with less-than-desirable genetic traits. 

This sounds like Gattaca.