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(sz) Celebrities give the impression that getting pregnant in your forties is child’s play, but for the rest of us it’s not always so easy.
Nicole Kidman is pregnant. After suffering a miscarriage and an ectopic pregnancy while married to Tom Cruise, the 40-year-old Hollywood star declared last week that she is expecting again, with her current husband, the country singer Keith Urban.
The couple were pictured in Sydney after Kidman had reportedly dropped plans to shoot a film in Germany in order to protect her unborn child. She joins a growing list of celebrities who have sneaked motherhood in under the wire. Carla Bruni, the French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s fiancée, is rumoured to be pregnant with her second child at 40. Madonna gave birth at 41; Holly Hunter had twins at 47; and Cherie Blair produced Leo, her fourth child, at 46.
Are these women exceptional? How easy is it to get pregnant in your forties? How many resort to IVF with donor eggs? Doctors have warned that women who delay motherhood are “defying nature” and increasing the risks for themselves and their babies, provoking a backlash in some quarters from women who smell a conspiracy against older mothers. more…

From: »The Belfast Telegraph«

(sz) Eighteen years ago, IVF was still considered a novelty. The research on which it depended was difficult and, controversially, involved the destruction of human embryos. So it was hardly surprising that the 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, which covered the research and clinical practice, reached the statute book by the skin of the teeth of those, such as myself, who pushed it through.
Science and society have moved a long way since, with IVF more or less accepted. Human embryos are used to create human cell-lines, with the ultimate goal of treating diseases as well as remedying infertility. So now, in the House of Lords, we are in the process of revising and updating the act. Yet the old objections remain, alongside many new ones. Against this background, an amendment has been proposed, to be discussed at the report stage of the bill on Tuesday, to set up a national human bioethics commission. more…

From: »The Guardian Unlimited« (Comment)

(sz) A medical clinic specialising in the treatment of fertility problems is to be located in Antigua, for the first time.
The Antigua Assisted Fertility Centre (AAFC) is to be established through collaboration between the Barbados Fertility Centre and the Mansoor Medical Centre in Antigua.
The AAFC will expand options for patients in Antigua and Barbuda and the northern Caribbean islands who require fertility assistance. It is the brainchild of gynaecologist Dr Raymond Mansoor, consultant and founder of Mansoor Medical Centre, who and over the last few years recognised a void in the care for couples who need fertility assistance. more…

From: »The Antigua Sun«

(wz) A child conceived through in vitro fertilization but implanted in his mother’s womb after his father’s death is not automatically considered his father’s heir under Arkansas’ inheritance laws, the state Supreme Court said Thursday in an advisory opinion.
The court issued the opinion in response to a request from a federal judge in an Arkansas woman’s lawsuit against the Social Security Administration over its denial of her claim for “child’s insurance benefits.”
The Supreme Court noted that the state statute governing intestacy, or the distribution of property after a person dies without a will, was enacted in 1969, before the technology of in vitro fertilization was developed, and therefore does not address the issue.
Because the law predates the technology, “we can definitively say that the General Assembly … did not intend for the statute to permit a child, created though in vitro fertilization and implanted after the father’s death, to inherit under intestate succession,” Justice Paul Danielson wrote. more…

From: »Arkansas News Bureau«

(cz) IVF clinics will have to give their patients full details of all likely treatment costs before they start to provide it, under regulations announced yesterday by the Government’s fertility watchdog.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) will insist that clinics provide costed plans after every early consultation, as a condition of licensing them. The measures are designed to protect the 70 per cent of IVF patients who pay an average of about £3,500 for private therapy, after complaints that they incur unexpected fees after treatment begins.
Charges for drugs and diagnostic tests, for some of which there is little evidence showing them to be effective, can increase the total cost of a cycle of IVF to more than £8,000. Many patients, however, are told only about the basic costs of therapy when they agree to start, and later feel obliged to pay the extra fees as they have already spent thousands of pounds.
The HFEA decision to make costed treatment plans mandatory follows a survey of Fertility Views, the regulator’s advisory panel, which is made up of 1,000 current and former IVF patients. It found that 85 per cent had paid for their own treatment, yet only 20 per cent of these were given a costed plan at the outset. Others were shown a general price list, or were told verbally about likely costs. more…

From: »The Times«

(sz) Scientists are offering infertile Wearside women half-price IVF treatment in return for donating some of their eggs for research.
Women from Sunderland and Durham are being sought for the scheme – known as egg sharing – which is being offered by the North East England Stem Cell Institute (Nesci) and the Newcastle Fertility Centre at Life.
Under the scheme, the Nesci research team can contribute about half of the cost of a patient’s IVF treatment – £1,500 – in return for the donation of half of her eggs.
There have been 15 volunteers from the North East who have come forward and are now undergoing treatment, although none is yet from the Wearside area.
Professor Alison Murdoch, head of department at the Newcastle Fertility Centre at Life, said: “Volunteers have been essential to medical research for many years and this is a way of engaging volunteers from a wider field in a research project.
“Like all UK research, it will be strictly regulated at a local and national level by ethics committees and the principals of research governance.
“We expect this to open the door to some infertile women who may now find it less difficult to meet the cost of IVF.” more…

From: »The Sunderland Echo«

(wz) In a discovery that could have a far-reaching impact on the development of drugs, scientists in Karnataka’s Manipal town have for the first time found clues to how defects occur during foetal growth.
Researchers from the Manipal Institute of Regenerative Medicine have discovered that the presence of very low amounts of an endotoxin, a potentially toxic natural compound, in the foetal environment can cause defects in the development of tissues in a growing foetus.
Gram-negative bacterial lipopolysaccahrides (LPS) are the main antigenic components of the cell wall of harmful bacteria that cause vaginosis, which is a common bacterial infection of the maternal genital tract.
LPS, which is harmful for foetuses, is regularly shed in the environment where the embryo grows when the mother is suffering from vaginosis.
Silent infections of gram-negative bacteria like Chlamydia trachomatis can also cause birth defects with poorly developed tissues and organs of the foetus.
An understanding of the molecular mechanisms of such pathogenesis remains obscure owing to ethical issues dogging the use of human embryos in research.
‘We have, therefore, used embryoid bodies as a tool to understand the effect of endotoxins on the induction of lineages in a developing foetus,’ Kaushik Deb, principal scientist of the Manipal Institute’s embryonic stem cell programme and chief researcher of the team, told IANS. more…

From: »NewsPost India«

(sz) Religious condemnation is the most significant reason why Turkey is more successful than many European countries in helping parents to have in vitro fertilization (IVF) babies, said Professor Turan Çetin in the Dept. of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Çukurova University’s Medical School.
The Roman Catholic Church is opposed to most kinds of in vitro fertilization and advocates that infertility is a call from God to adopt children. The price tag in Turkey for a high-quality IVF procedure is substantially lower than in European countries.
The cost of in vitro fertilization IVF, ranges between $9,000 and $10,000 in other countries but the “test-tube” method of having a baby costs only YTL 3,000 in Turkey where the success rate is gradually increasing, Çetin told the Anatolian new agency this week. Social security insurance covers YTL 1,200 of the cost if the candidate mother is under 40.The desire to have children and create a family is one of the most basic of human instincts - but World Health Organization statistics show that one in seven couples is unable to have children without assistance from a physician.
Istanbul’s first in vitro fertilisation (IVF) center at Jinemed Hospital is one of a number in Turkey reaching out to patients abroad who might not have the money, legal right or time to wait in their own countries. Established over 16 years ago Jinemed has pioneered the introduction of many advances in fertility technology. Since then, the total number of IVF clinics in Turkey has reached 50. more…

From: »Turkish Daily News«

(wz) The recent birth of a baby by a 64-year-old woman in Germany has sparked debate about the Embryo Protection Law, which prohibits egg donation. But with rising infertility rates, Germany may need to rethink its policies.
The 64-year-old German woman who recently gave birth to a healthy baby girl made headlines around the world. But her age did not set a precedent. Last year, a 67-year-old Spanish woman became the world’s oldest mother when she gave birth to twins, topping the record from the previous year of a 66-year-old Romanian who also had twins.
The unnamed German became pregnant with the help of in-vitro fertilization (IVF), using an egg donated by a 25-year-old and the sperm of the German woman’s husband. The treatment was conducted abroad, as donating eggs cells for pregnancies is illegal in Germany.
The prohibition of egg cell donation is part of Germany’s “Embryo Protection Law,” which was passed in 1990. Sperm donation, however, is permitted. more…

From: »Deutsche Welle«

(cz) Sperm donation is becoming as rare as rain in Australia, leaving more and more infertile Australian couples facing up to a two-year wait for sperm donors.
“The sperm drought is throughout Australia,” Dr Anne Clark, medical director at Fertility First told Reuters on Thursday.
A proposed new law that will create a donor register ending anonymity, a reduction in the number of families that can use an individual donor, and a reduction in the maximum age limit for donors from 50 to 35, have all led to a fall in sperm donors.
There is a ban on sperm from all European countries with exposure to mad cow disease and US sperm banks are also running dry, which limits access to donors for Australian couples. more…

From: »Health24«