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(sz) A social networking site aimed at new dads and a documentary about Western couples seeking IVF in India are among the projects to secure investment from a £600,000 fund.
After record numbers of applications, regional screen agency Screen WM has announced the 21 successful screen media companies which will receive investment from the Advantage Development Fund.
The fund, supported by Advantage West Midlands and the European Regional Development Fund, was re-launched in February to enable new and existing screen-based media companies to undertake research and development work prior to bringing new projects to the market.
This allows companies to develop projects to a higher standard before launching, to minimise the risk of failure.
Among the projects that will benefit from the fund are four new quiz shows, a PC game development for businesses to develop and train their sales staff and several feature films.
Screen WM chief executive Suzie Norton said: “The phenomenal interest in and demand for the Advantage Development Fund underlines the expansion of the screen media sector in the region in the last few years.
“Enabling companies to develop new ideas is the lifeblood of the industry and is vital to the survival and success of our screen media companies.”
The re-launched Advantage Development Fund has been expanded beyond film and broadcast to include the games, interactive and new media sectors. This was in response to the growth of the sectors within the screen media industry and the recent expansion of Screen WM to include digital media. more…

From: »The Birmingham Post«

(cz) Infertility is growing and now affects about 15 percent of couples in the Czech Republic that entails a growing number of artificial fertilisation attempts, according to figures by the General Health Insurance Company (VZP).
Last year, VZP paid 5631 cases of in-vitro fertilisation, 705 more than in 2006. VZP pays first three fertilisation attempts, all others must be paid by the people concerned.
One cycle, including medicine, costs about 60,000 crowns. The figure may further grow if embryos are frozen, for instance.
Health Ministry spokesman Tomas Cikrt said prices will not be change in the next two to three years.
In the future, however, changes will be necessary because the number of infertile couples will be growing. The first Czech in-vitro child, a boy, was born on November 4, 1982.
At present some 23,000 people born thanks to the artificial fertilisation method live in the Czech Republic. Another 3000 are added every year. more…

From: »Prague Daily Monitor«

(wz) Healthy twin girls — Elizabeth and McKinney Caudill — are the first babies in Minnesota to be born from eggs that were frozen and then thawed before being fertilized in a petri dish.
Doctors at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester who treated the parents are now offering egg freezing as an option for those with a good reason to use it.
Egg freezing has growing appeal as a way to preserve fertility for women, or, as in the case of the twins’ parents, to avoid the wrenching decision of what to do with excess frozen embryos that will never become children. While frozen embryos remain by far the most common and successful choice for use in vitro fertilization (IVF), egg-freezing technology is rapidly improving.
Mayo’s is just one of many IVF clinics nationally trying to improve success rates for frozen eggs to cater to what many experts say is an enormous market. So far, only 200 to 300 babies have been born from frozen eggs worldwide. But with millions of women delaying child bearing and egg freezing so far the only way to bring a woman’s biological clock to a halt, experts say the technology could revolutionize women’s reproductive lives as much as the birth control pill did 40 years ago — for those who can afford it. more…

From: »Star Tribune«

(wz) A lesbian couple who tried to sue their doctor after having IVF twin girls shouldn’t have been allowed to take the case to court, the Australian Medical Association (AMA) says.
In the first Australian case, the Melbourne parents of four-year-old twin girls sued Canberra obstetrician Sydney Robert Armellin for almost $400,000 for implanting two embryos instead of the requested one.
The ACT Supreme Court yesterday rejected the couple’s claim and ordered them to pay Dr Armellin’s legal costs.
ACT AMA president Paul Jones says the case should never have reached court.
“We think that when the outcome is a healthy baby or babies that these matters shouldn’t end up in the court,” Dr Jones said on ABC radio.
“The AMA wouldn’t dispute that where the outcome is an undesirable one people should have the right to take action.
“But as an organisation we’ve had the view for a long time that when the outcome is a healthy baby that is not an adverse outcome.” more…

From: »News.Com.Au«

(sz) Infertility Network UK (I N UK) agree that there should be more clinical trials to test the efficacy of new IVF techniques There are clearly questions that need answering about a number of untested and expensive techniques offered to patients in IVF clinics.
Clare Brown, Chief Executive of I N UK said ” It is confusing for patients who really are stuck in the middle of this argument, with some clinicians and clinics offering treatments like Reproductive Immune Therapy and Pre-implantation Genetic Screening (PGS) and others coming down firmly against the procedures. There needs to be more clinical trials to establish whether or not these interventions are of benefit.”
The survey also indicated that 37.7% of the clinicians surveyed said that access to IVF should be conditional on criteria based on lifestyle choices such as denying access to smokers. Speaking on this Ms Brown said ” Eligibility criteria varies across the UK as does access to treatment, creating this treatment by postcode which is totally unacceptable. Infertility Network UK always encourages those who contact us to try and adopt a healthy lifestyle when trying to conceive, however, we believe lifestyle issues should be a matter for discussion between the patient and clinician. Lifestyle criteria should not be used as an out and out barrier to treatment. more…

From: »Medical News Today«

(cz) NHS penny-pinching is behind the dangerously high number of test-tube twins. For safety’s sake we must change the rule.
When Louise Brown was born 30 years ago today, the arrival of the first test-tube baby stirred immense controversy. Wonder at a medical technology that could remove the distress of infertility was matched by disquiet at a subversion of the natural order. The doctors responsible, Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe, were both hailed as pioneers and decried for playing God.
In vitro fertilisation (IVF) is today so-commonplace - accounting for one in 66 births - that the concerns of the 1970s seem quaint. But if few people still question its ethics, reproductive medicine has not lost its capacity to start arguments.
What is now up for debate is not whether IVF is acceptable, but how much of it should be paid for by the State, and how to reduce the multiple births that are by far its biggest hazard. These issues are inextricably linked. The British Government’s failure to realise this, however, has steered infertility policy in the wrong direction. In the country where IVF was developed, penny-pinching is making its provision less fair and less safe than it could be, for the sake of trifling budget savings.
Only one in 80 natural conceptions results in twins, but the rate after IVF is one in four. This is a direct result of present medical practice - in nine out of ten treatment cycles, two embryos are transferred to the womb to maximise the chances of conception. more…

From: »The Times«

(sz) The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry has blocked what would have been the nation’s first attempt to use in vitro fertilization in the cases of two couples who are both infected with HIV, despite approval by Ogikubo Hospital in Tokyo in January last year, sources close to the issue said Saturday.
Though hospital ethics committee approved the reproduction treatment plan, the ministry has asked the hospital to postpone implementation, saying more deliberation and ethical examination was necessary. In other countries, views are divided over whether reproductive assistance should be offered to couples in similar circumstances.
In a rare move, a ministry study panel contemplating the issue will hold a public hearing July 28 to examine whether to approve the treatment and to devise guidelines for similar, future cases.
Hideji Hanabusa, vice president of Ogikubo Hospital, and his team of doctors have developed a method to remove the virus that causes AIDS from sperm.
Using the procedure, in vitro fertilization has been implemented in the cases of couples in which only the husbands were infected with HIV, at institutions such as Keio University and Niigata University.
So far, 65 babies have been born through this method, and all the mothers and children have remained HIV-free. Given the successful track record, Ogikubo Hospital considered applying the method in the cases of two couples in which both the mother and father are infected with HIV.
The husbands of both couples became infected with HIV through tainted blood products, and their viruses are highly reproductive or resistant to AIDS-treatment drugs.
It is possible if the couples conceive their babies via normal sexual intercourse, the wives, with less quantities of the AIDS virus and whose immune systems have been stabilized, would be reinfected by their husbands’ more virulent virus, resulting in worsened health conditions.
But if the couples’ medical conditions deteriorate enough, both parents potentially could die before their children reach adulthood. more…

From: »The Daily Yomiuri«

(sz) At the just-concluded European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) annual conference in Barcelona, BioXCell ( http://www.bioxcell.com) reports enthusiastic reception of its INVOcell infertility treatment.
According to Rusty Warren, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of BioXcell, “Reaching the more than 100 million worldwide couples suffering from infertility is the goal of over two dozen international marketing organizations already expressing interest in representing BioXcell and INVOcell. We recently received a CE Mark, the European equivalent to approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the U.S.”
Sean Paradis, BioXcell Vice President, and Director of Sales and Marketing, said, “We are encouraged that leading distributors in the healthcare industry across Europe and Asia are making INVOcell available. BioXcell has a clear and focused sales and marketing strategy moving forward that will ensure the long term success of the INVOcell. Infertility patients are long overdue for a procedure and product that makes sense.
“INVOcell allows conception and embryo development to take place inside the woman’s body, making having a baby simpler and less expensive, while promoting involvement by the woman,” Mr. Paradis added.
Claude Ranoux, MD, President and Chief Scientist of BioXcell, explained, “The INVO procedure uses a lower stimulation approach to produce eggs for fertilization. Eggs are combined with sperm in the INVOcell device and placed in the woman’s vaginal cavity where it remains for 3 days. This step eliminates the need for a complex IVF laboratory and allows the woman’s body to provide the nurturing environment in which conception and early embryo development take place.” more…

From: »The Wall Street Journal«

(cz) Thirty years after the first test tube baby, firms are starting to acknowledge the need of would-be parents to take time off.
On Friday [July, 20th –ed.] Louise Brown will celebrate her 30th birthday. If you can’t quite place the name, she was the first child to be born through IVF (in-vitro fertilisation) - the trailblazer for one and a half million ‘test tube babies’ worldwide.
The science may now be well established - more than 32,500 women have IVF treatment in the UK every year, producing 9,000 full-term pregnancies and 11,000 babies, including the multiple births - but funding arrangements are still struggling to catch up, as many couples struggle to get the necessary time off work and to pay for the treatment.
However, 2008 could come to be seen as a breakthrough year. Employers are starting to develop formal policies to help couples, following a European Court of Justice case brought against her employer by Sabine Mayr, an Austrian waitress. In February the court ruled that sacking a woman because she was receiving IVF was sex discrimination.
The ruling will also apply to ‘less favourable treatment stopping short of dismissal’, according to solicitors Eversheds. An employer who, for example, failed to promote a woman because she was feeling unwell and taking time off during the IVF course could also be on difficult ground. Since damages for sex discrimination are unlimited - averaging £10,000 in employment tribunals in 2006-07 - well-organised employers are taking the issue seriously.
Banking group HSBC, which has 40,000 staff in the UK, gives up to 20 days’ paid leave for IVF treatment, but finds that women rarely need more than 12 of them. Asda is another leading light. Women among its 165,000-strong workforce can get up to five paid days off a year for fertility treatment - and men (either as partners or if having treatment themselves) can have up to one and a half days. Asda claims that when it introduced its scheme in 2003 it was the first UK employer to give paid leave. more…

From: »The Guardian«

(sz) “Baby of the century” ran the front-page headline of the Daily Express on July 11th, 1978. The paper promised the story of Lesley Brown, who was barricaded inside Oldham and District General Hospital, near Manchester, waiting to give birth. The world’s press was camped outside; the front doors locked and staff forced to sneak in and out via a side entrance. Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards, the obstetrician and physiologist who had, nine months before, taken an egg from one of Mrs Brown’s ovaries under anaesthetic and fertilised it in vitro with her husband’s sperm, were in hiding. It had been, said Time magazine after Mrs Brown was delivered of a daughter on July 25th, “the most awaited birth in perhaps 2,000 years”.
Thirty years after Louise Brown was born, “test-tube babies” are commonplace. Around the world 3.5m have been born and at least 200,000 more join them each year. Yet infertile people in the country where it all began are among the least likely in the rich world to receive what is now a standard treatment for their condition. Just under 700 attempts at in vitro fertilisation (IVF) are carried out per million Britons each year, one of the lowest rates in Europe. The 11,262 IVF babies born in Britain in 2005, the latest year for which figures are available, were just 1.6% of all births, compared with rates of 3-3.5% in the Nordic countries. more…

From: »The Economist«