varoblog

(cz) The image of the 1950s is that of a simple and quaint life. The picture-perfect nuclear family was comprised of a father who worked from dawn until dusk, a mother with a bobbed perm and a kill-you-with-kindness attitude and kids (one girl, one boy of course) who thought that the world’s greatest injustice was being bullied in high school. Throw in a fascination with dishwashers and a loose-to-iron-fisted love for the Bible and you have your stereotypical, white-picket-fence-dog-in-the-yard family, every hippie’s nightmare and every Republican’s dream. While this image is dead to our generation, the dream for a “perfect family” just can’t stay buried.
Due to technology’s progression, this dream could become a reality some day. According to an MSN article by Rachel Lehmann-Haupt, “Parents are looking to prescription drugs, in vitro fertilization, donor eggs and sperm and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, a technique that lets doctors screen for genetic diseases and gender,” in order to help a couple – a supremely wealthy couple – create their dream baby, a super baby, if you will. It is possible that one day couples might be able to select, in advance, many different qualities for their baby.
This doesn’t mean, even as the technology progresses, that parents can choose a blue-eyed, brown-haired pessimist with a love for musical theatre and Brazilian culture.
“Because potential parents can choose egg donors based on their traits and genetic histories, my clients often get a false sense of control,” said Brigid Dowd, the director of the Donor Egg Bank in Los Angeles.
In the end, you never know what kind of child you’re going to get. Dowd encourages her clients to be as open-minded as possible and to allow elbowroom in their child’s development.
One complicated aspect of reproductive technology is pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). According to the MSN article, it is an important scientific advancement that has a base price tag of $3,000 to $5,000. Completely independent of that price is the cost of in vitro fertilization, which can cost anywhere between $10,000 and $15,000. In total, the pricey and still very new process can run as high as a gut-punching $100,000. more…

From: »New University«

(sz) They don’t make a traditional family portrait, but there is steady stream of gay couples coming to the city (Mumbai - ed.) for infertility treatment to have babies. The ongoing debate in court on Article 377 notwithstanding, India is being seen as an affordable haven for gay couples, whether married or not, who want to be parents.
In fact, in the last week of September, city’s infertility specialist Dr Gautam Allahabadia spoke at the fourth world congress of the World Association of Reproductive Medicine in Mexico about his Bandra clinic’s experience with 12 gay couples. “From 2005 to 2007, 12 same-sex gay couples were treated with a total of 16 oocyte retrieval cycles,” he told the audience, which included the creator of Dolly, the cloned sheep, Dr K H S Campbell.
The 16 cycles were done using surrogate mothers. All the gay couples hailed from foreign countries, including France, Spain, Sweden and Israel. Six couples got pregnant, with four surrogate mothers having already delivered. “The first couple got a boy and girl, the second and third got a boy each,” said the doctor. While the fourth couple’s surrogate delivered prematurely and the twins died, the fifth and sixth couples are awaiting delivery next month.
At a time when Union ministers are caught in a war of words over Article 377, which considers homosexuality as an abnormal act, gay activists and doctors point out that guidelines laid down by the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) in 2002 allowed Indian clinics to treat same-sex couples with donor egg IVF and surrogacy. more…

From: »The Times Of India«

(sz) Donating embryos for adoption may seem a logical choice for people with leftover embryos, but few choose to do so. Leanna Wolfe, 55, now understands some of the obstacles.
The Los Angeles woman, a professor of anthropology at L.A. Valley College, decided at age 51 that she would try to have a baby. She found both egg and sperm donors among people she knew. Twelve embryos were made, and Wolfe underwent embryo transfers twice, but both cycles failed.
She ultimately decided to abandon her efforts to become a single mother, but she had two embryos left in cryopreservation. She consulted the egg and sperm donors, and the three had several long conversations about what to do with the two embryos that belonged, in some sense, to all three.
“We are all friends,” Wolfe said. “Initially, I thought of donating to research. But they encouraged me to try to have them made into babies rather than used for stem cell research. All of us were interested in a baby. To donate to research seemed kind of depressing. The financial and emotional effort that went into this made them seem so valuable.”
She had no idea how difficult the donation and adoption process would be. more…

From: »The San Francisco Chronicle«

(cz) Professor Steve Jones paints a gloomy picture of human evolution at the end of the line with only gradual homogenisation towards universal brownness to look forward to. But in fact we are likely to be soon entering the most dynamic period of evolution – one in which humans will be able to transform their own biology by genetic engineering and gene therapy. Whereas all previous evolutionary innovation has relied on the slow and wasteful process of natural selection, mankind will soon be able to engineer his own biological destiny. This will eventually lead to an end to cancer, heart disease and even perhaps that most intractable of genetic diseases: death itself.
It is easy to imagine situations where genetic modification to produce so-called designer babies could be considered to be a good thing. In the UK, about one in 33 babies are born with a genetic disease. Some of these will be relatively mild conditions but many, like cystic fibrosis or muscular dystrophy, will be terminal or severely debilitating. It is now possible, using pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), to examine an embryo generated by IVF and detect the presence of the defective gene. This is currently performed in a number of centres in the UK and elsewhere for parents of children born with a genetic defect who have a high chance of bearing a second child with the same or a related defect. PGD allows parents to choose whether or not to implant an embryo into the woman’s uterus. Clearly, if the embryo carries a fatal gene defect then most parents will choose not to have it implanted into the womb.
Currently, this form of selective implantation is all that is available to parents. But scientists may soon have more to offer. Considerable progress is being made in research designed to correct genetic defects in affected children, so-called gene therapy. In these approaches, a copy of the healthy gene is introduced into the cells of the patient in the hope that it will replace or complement the defective gene. Some success in this approach has been reported, particularly for patients with the blood disease haemophilia. But huge challenges remain. The main problem is delivering the new healthy gene to enough cells in the child’s body. This task would be far easier if the number of cells was very small, for instance in an embryo. more…

From: »The Guardian« (comment)

(wz) Infertility patients find themselves caught in the dispute over when life begins
Six years of frustration and heartbreak. That’s how Gina Rathan recalls her attempts to become pregnant.
Finally, she and her husband, Cheddi, conceived a daughter, now 3, through in vitro fertilization. About a year later, she became pregnant with a second child, naturally. Their family was complete.
Then, a year ago, the Fountain Valley couple received a bill reminding them that their infertility journey wasn’t quite over. They owed $750 to preserve three frozen embryos they’d created but hadn’t used.
“I don’t see them as not being life yet,” says Gina Rathan, 42, a pharmaceutical sales representative. “I thought, ‘How can I discard them when I have a beautiful child from that IVF cycle?’ ” Many other former infertility patients also appear to be grappling over the fate of embryos they have no plans to use: An estimated 500,000 embryos are in cryopreservation in the United States.
As with the Rathans, this unexpected conundrum often arises well after the infertility crisis has passed, triggering impassioned and highly personal debates about the science and ethics of human life.
The discussion boils down to a fundamental question: What is this icy clump of cells smaller than a grain of sand? Across the country, people with less personal stakes in the matter are asking that question as well.
Colorado voters will decide in November whether to amend the state’s constitution to assert that an embryo is a person. Indiana lawmakers have proposed legislation that would allow abandoned embryos to be adopted for implantation by another couple. New Jersey legislators have moved to allow unused embryos to become wards of the state. And Georgia and West Virginia are considering legislation that would give embryos “personhood” status.
Although these proposals are sponsored in large part by abortion opponents, infertility patients nationwide — whose feelings about abortion run the gamut — are finding themselves ensnared in a debate about when life begins.
“They are in the middle of this ideological war, although they may not be aware, they are in the middle of a war,” says Renee Whitley, co-chairwoman of the national advocacy committee for Resolve, an organization supporting people with infertility. “This is the politics of embryos.” more…

From: »PressDemocrat.com«

(sz) The Oregon Court of Appeals has ordered six frozen embryos destroyed after ruling they can be treated as personal property in a divorce.
The court ruled unanimously on Wednesday that an agreement leaving the final decision up to the ex-wife must be followed.
Dr. Laura Dahl, a pediatrician, and her former husband, Dr. Darrell Angle, an orthodontist, had attempted to conceive through in vitro fertilization.
After several failed attempts, the couple gave up and left the embryos with Oregon Health & Science University under an agreement that spelled out how they would be stored.
Dahl decided to have the embryos destroyed, but Angle had argued they should be donated to other couples trying to conceive.
In an opinion by Presiding Judge Rex Armstrong, the court ruled there is a contractual right to determine the fate of the embryos as personal property.
But Armstrong noted there is little guidance on who gets to make that decision in a divorce, so the court relied on a 1998 New York state case that held agreements on what to do with embryos after in vitro fertilization are binding. more…

From: »Associated Press«

(wz) Apollo Hospitals Colombo announces the launch of the Centre of Excellence for fertility, a long felt need in the health care sector of Sri Lanka.
The Centre of Excellence “Apollo fertility centre” was unveiled by the Chairman of Lanka Hospitals Corporation on the 17th of September 2008 at the IVF laboratory amidst a large gathering of distinguished invitees. The fertility team of Apollo, Colombo headed by Dr Nithya Jayawickrama an eminent Senior Consultant Gynaecologist & Obstetrician with 25 years extensive experience and exposure in the UK, Dr. Madara Ralapanawe the the Resident Clinical Embroyologist of Apollo, which is now a household name in Sri Lanka. Dr. Madara Ralapanawe is the only medical doctor who holds a post graduate master degree in Clinical Embryology in Sri Lanka. There are many other Gynaecologists, Radiologists, Endocrinologists, Urologists and Physicians teamed together in Apollo fertility centre to provide exclusive medical care to achieve a pregnancy to Subfertile couples.
Apollo fertility centre has achieved 110 pregnancies during last 10 months from Intra Uterine Insemination (IUI) treatments. Many gather due to the success of Apollo fertility centre well planned follicular monitoring and IUI’s which are performed in the presence of the husband during the procedures. Apollo Colombo has always been the most sought after Hospital for medical care for many years amongst Sri Lankans and also amongst the neighboring countries. Apollo is well known to provide medical care to thousands of patients in different fields of medical services. Today there are sub fertile couples from Maldives, Sri Lankans from Middle East as well as from USA and Canada inquiring and flying to Apollo Colombo for their fertility treatments. Apollo fertility centre provides up-to-date curative and rehabilitive advice and treatments through wide range of packages in fertility treatments giving a total solution to subfertile couples of Sri Lanka. more…

From: »The Daily Mirror« (Sri Lanka)

(sz) Obstacles include piles of paperwork, choosing the type of medical research, getting the consent of egg and sperm donors or simply finding an organization that will accept the donation.
Chris and Tanya Bailey of Mission Viejo have a 3-year-old and triplet toddlers, all conceived through in vitro fertilization. After the birth of the triplets, they had 13 embryos left over in cryopreservation.
The idea of discarding them made the couple uneasy.
“I thought of them as potential life, but I don’t think of them as children,” says Chris Bailey. “They are definitely more than sperm and egg.”
After much discussion, the couple decided to donate the embryos to research.
“We felt we were so lucky that research had been done and [that it] gave us the opportunity to have children,” says Tanya Bailey. “So why not give our embryos to research as well to help somebody else out?”
The decision to donate to research, says Chris Bailey, “was a logical choice.”
Even after grappling with the decision, however, many people find that donating to research is easier said than done. People wishing to donate to research must complete detailed paperwork and may even be asked to select the type of medical research for which they want their donation used. Others find they cannot proceed with their donation if they used egg and sperm donors who would not consent to the donation. Still others simply can’t find a medical research organization to accept their donation.
For Californians, at least, donating unused embryos to research has become somewhat easier in the last two years. The launch of the state’s stem cell research program and the opening of a dedicated tissue bank at UC San Francisco has opened at least one clear path for donation by providing a place for families to send their embryos where they will be available to researchers. more…

From: »The Los Angeles Times«

(cz) This year sees the 30th birthday of the first IVF baby, Louise Brown. Her arrival was met with enormous press interest. Thousands of couples signed up for the same treatment, but the Catholic Church objected, drawing battle lines that are still evident.
Today we tend to treat IVF as almost routine but it is salutary to remember the headlines then: it was thought that IVF children might be damaged or deformed because of lack of some early essential ingredient of the mother’s womb, or be different in some terrible shocking way.
Then there were the ethical concerns about conception outside the body and treatment of the embryo, concerns which are even stronger today than they were 30 years ago: millions around the world believe that the soul enters the body at the moment of conception and that it is wrong to interfere with nature and wrong to tamper in any way with the embryo, let alone do research on it or store it in a freezer.
IVF goes to the heart of many of our most important beliefs and traditions about the commencement and sanctity of life; the nature of the family and marriage; the soul, dignity, autonomy, the difference between humans and animals, our control over the nature of the next generation and indeed the purpose of life and childbearing. There are no more profound debates to be had in any other topic, and they all started with the British success in achieving fertilisation of the egg by sperm in the laboratory. more…

From: »The Independent«

(sz) Having a test-tube baby may now involve hiring a lawyer along with a doctor. India’s new draft rules on infertility state that couples who need a surrogate mother will have to approach a semen bank instead of an infertility specialist to make a selection.
Welcome to the future of infertility treatment as envisaged by the new Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Bill & Rules, 2008. The bill, which was posted online on Monday to invite public comment over the following month, has triggered mixed responses. It’s likely to be passed in the next parliamentary session.
While many fear that the new rules-along with the mountainous paperwork-will only increase costs, an equal number feel that the new laws protect all the parties involved, from the parents and surrogate women to the child and the doctors.
The 135-page draft rules attempt to plug the many loopholes that have brought infamy to the world of infertility treatment. “For the first time, there will be regulation,’’ said a doctor. Situations such as Japanese baby Manji’s plight-her parents broke up and her surrogate mother doesn’t want her-can henceforth be avoided. For instance, all foreigners seeking infertility treatment in India will first have to register with their embassy. Their notarized statement will then have to be handed over to the treating doctor. The foreign couple will also state whom the child should be entrusted to (which set of grandparents, for instance) in case of an eventuality such as a genetic parent’s death.
“All the grey zones in infertility treatment have become black and white,’’ said Dr Gautam Allahabadia, infertility specialist from Mumbai who was a member of the drafting committee. more…

From: »The Times Of India«