Ivf

Twenty-five years ago, one of the most revolutionary events in the history of humankind took place - a little girl named Louise Brown was born. The world's first "test-tube" baby arrived amid a storm of protest. Many in the then-emerging field of bioethics, such as Leon Kass - who is today the chair of President Bush's Council on Bioethics - argued that creating people by means of in vitro fertilization - mixing sperm and eggs in a glass dish (test tubes were never actually used)

Does in vitro fertilization harm children's health? Infertility researchers offered a mostly reassuring answer yesterday, but with caveats. On one hand, there appears to be no connection between IVF and developmental problems, cancer, deformities, or overall health difficulties, based on studies of children up to age 8. On the other hand, IVF dramatically raises the risk of multiple births, which in turn is linked to prematurity with all its complications. And even singleton IVF babies are twice as likely to be born prematurely, underweight, and die within a week as babies conceived naturally, the researchers concluded.

Louise Brown turned 25 last week. From all appearances, Brown, a postal worker in Bristol, England, is a woman as normal as her name. But that name forever will be associated with a turning-point in human history. Thanks to in vitro fertilization (IVF), she was the first person whose conception took place outside the body, and hers was the first successful IVF birth. Twenty-five years later, IVF has helped give life and happiness to many thousands. That is a great triumph.

It was a technical explanation of a high-tech procedure to produce that miracle of life - a baby. Yet it all boiled down to a very simple question. After a while, one of the men in the group asked, "What's the success rate?" The nurse-practitioner conducting the informational session about in-vitro fertilization told the group that the pregnancy rate was around 20 percent. That question - just what is the success rate? - is being asked with increasing frequency as the demand grows for in-vitro fertilization, a technique in which eggs and sperm are combined in the laboratory and the fertilized eggs are then transferred to the womb.

Should health insurance cover infertility treatment? Infertile couples and their doctors certainly think so. As science has pushed the boundaries of reproduction, they have lobbied for coverage of all treatment, including in vitro fertilization, the expensive, high-tech procedure that brings egg and sperm together in a lab dish. Last week, there was new ammunition for their lobbying efforts from a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. A team of researchers concluded that if more women used in vitro fertilization (IVF)

Conception is not a commodity People who have heard me criticize New Jersey's new law requiring insurance ratepayers to subsidize infertility treatments question how I could oppose such wonder technologies as in-vitro fertilization. I respond that to deem artificial conception good because it produces a baby that a parent wants is akin to building one's dream house above a sacred burial ground or an amusement park on a hallowed battlefield. Assisted-conception advocates should consider the following: Assisted conception entails the buying and selling of life.

When the McCaughey septuplets were born in 1997, critics were quick to question the quality of the treatment that led to such a dangerous multiple pregnancy. The second-guessing intensified with the births of the Chukwu octuplets a year later. But a new study suggests that the increasingly common problem of triplets or greater is unavoidable when fertility drugs are used to force the ovaries to ripen many eggs at once, as in these world-famous cases. Even when doctors carefully follow standard guidelines for ovulation induction, about 9 percent of women will have so-called high-order multiples, according to research conducted at the Center for Human Reproduction in New York and Chicago.

Asian and African American women are less likely to be successful with in vitro fertilization than white or Hispanic women, new research shows. The reasons for the disparity are not clear, but the effect of race was as significant as aging on fertility, according to two studies presented yesterday at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine convention in Philadelphia. In other words, a 35-year-old Asian or black woman had the same chance of delivering an IVF baby as a 40-year-old white or Hispanic woman - about 20 percent.

A refinement of in vitro fertilization (IVF) can enable more couples to overcome infertility while reducing their risk of the most dangerous side effect of treatment - triplets or even greater multiples, new research shows. When a baby is conceived in a lab dish, a technological hurdle sets the stage for multiple births. Most embryos won't grow in culturing liquids for more than three days, yet most three-day-old embryos are too tiny to take hold in a woman's womb. To increase the odds of success, doctors routinely transfer three to six embryos into the uterus - and hope the result is not triplets or more.

In another strange permutation of modern reproductive science, a local woman gave birth to a healthy son last December - more than eight years after he was conceived in a petri dish at Pennsylvania Hospital. His mother's egg - fertilized by his father's sperm - had been frozen in liquid nitrogen in the intervening years while his parents considered whether to test fate and try for another pregnancy. The couple had a baby girl in December 1989 as a result of in vitro fertilization.

WASHINGTON - The roadside bomb that exploded outside Andrew Robinson's humvee in Iraq six years ago broke the Marine staff sergeant's neck and left him without use of his legs. It also cast doubt on his ability to father a child, a gnawing emotional wound for a then-23-year-old who had planned to start a family with his wife of less than two years. The catastrophic spinal cord injury meant the couple's best hope for children was in vitro fertilization, an expensive and time-consuming medical procedure whose cost isn't covered by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Question: My husband and I have been trying to conceive for over two years. I feel like my life is in a holding pattern. We'll be starting IVF soon. Already tried some other high-tech procedures. I can't plan a vacation or commit to anything long-term outside of work because "soon I might be pregnant. " After living my life like this for two years, I am getting really tired of it. We really want a child. I'm 35, so I don't feel like we can take a break. Any advice? This stinks.

Question: My religious-convert sister (RCS) has told my gay sister (GS) that RCS and her husband and children will not ever meet GS's children (1-year-old twins). GS is still welcome to visit RCS and her family alone. RCS's rationale seems to be that her children are getting old enough to ask hard questions, and she doesn't know what to tell them about their aunts and their IVF cousins. I am devastated that our family apparently will never again be all together, not to mention incredibly angry and hurt.

Last June, after a week of fertility-drug shots, Christine Mozes' ovaries went into overdrive, literally bursting with eggs ripening in their watery sacs. If she were to have taken the full course of drugs, her hyperstimulated ovaries could have triggered life-threatening breathing problems, kidney failure, and blood clots. George Taliadouros, her avuncular physician at Delaware Valley Institute of Fertility and Genetics in Marlton, cut off the treatment she needed to get pregnant.

THE DAWN OF Kevin Federline's hip-hop career has begun, though it remains to be seen if it will last past breakfast. A track by Federline was posted on the Internet by Disco D, the producer of his upcoming album, "The Truth," due next year. Though the song has since been taken off Disco D's Web site, it has popped up elsewhere, giving a glimpse of Mr. Britney Spears' rhyming, um, abilities. "Back then, they called me K-Fed, but you can call me Daddy instead," he intones in the chorus of "Y'all Ain't Ready.

Does in vitro fertilization harm children's health? Infertility researchers offered a mostly reassuring answer yesterday, but with caveats. On one hand, there appears to be no connection between IVF and developmental problems, cancer, deformities, or overall health difficulties, based on studies of children up to age 8. On the other hand, IVF dramatically raises the risk of multiple births, which in turn is linked to prematurity with all its complications. And even singleton IVF babies are twice as likely to be born prematurely, underweight, and die within a week as babies conceived naturally, the researchers concluded.

Asian and African American women are less likely to be successful with in vitro fertilization than white or Hispanic women, new research shows. The reasons for the disparity are not clear, but the effect of race was as significant as aging on fertility, according to two studies presented yesterday at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine convention in Philadelphia. In other words, a 35-year-old Asian or black woman had the same chance of delivering an IVF baby as a 40-year-old white or Hispanic woman - about 20 percent.

Much like their patients, U.S. infertility clinics are sensitive and sometimes torn about what to do with leftover frozen embryos. In getting rid of surplus embryos, some clinics hold quasi-funerals, others incubate the thawed cells until they stop growing, and still others give them back to couples for disposal, according to the first national survey to look at the fate of spare embryos. The variety came as a surprise to the researchers who conducted the anonymous survey of 217 in vitro fertilization clinics.

Twenty-five years ago, one of the most revolutionary events in the history of humankind took place - a little girl named Louise Brown was born. The world's first "test-tube" baby arrived amid a storm of protest. Many in the then-emerging field of bioethics, such as Leon Kass - who is today the chair of President Bush's Council on Bioethics - argued that creating people by means of in vitro fertilization - mixing sperm and eggs in a glass dish (test tubes were never actually used)

Louise Brown turned 25 last week. From all appearances, Brown, a postal worker in Bristol, England, is a woman as normal as her name. But that name forever will be associated with a turning-point in human history. Thanks to in vitro fertilization (IVF), she was the first person whose conception took place outside the body, and hers was the first successful IVF birth. Twenty-five years later, IVF has helped give life and happiness to many thousands. That is a great triumph.