April 28, 2010
Filed under: IVF — Alan @ 2:05 pm
The United States has a flourishing egg donation business that sees young women being paid for donating their eggs, often to pay for things like university tuition. There are also of course women in difficult financial situations who also self their eggs to clinics in order to supplement their day-to-day living.
In the UK the situation is very different as it is completely illegal for anyone to profit financially in any way from egg donation, in this country is seen very much as a selfless act of generosity rather than a business.
But now they public consultation by Nuffield Council on Bioethics is to look into the whole issue of donations, including not only eggs but organs and tissues as well. At issue is the donation of not only renewable resources such as eggs, sperm and blood was also non-renewable donations such as hearts and eyes.
This possible change of heart has come about because of a drastic shortage of all kinds of donations, currently there are over 1000 patients waiting on various transplant lists, but in 2009 there were only 3550 transplants.
There is currently a need for 500 additional sperm donors and well over 1000 egg donors per year. As the law stands at present donors are only permitted to claim very small amounts in expenses, and absolutely no kind of direct or indirect payments.
The study will look into the possibility of payments, but will also consider other, non-financial payments, such as basic thank you letters sent from recipients to the donor. However it seems that there is simply a change in official attitudes towards all kinds of donations and in particular eggs
April 17, 2010
Filed under: IVF — Alan @ 3:00 am
Fertility scientists from the US have said that air pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide may affect the outcome of invitro fertilization.
The US team said that it studied the outcomes of the first IVF treatments of 7,403 women at the Hershey Medical Center at Penn State, Shady Grove Fertility in Maryland, and the College of Physicians and Surgeons at the New York Columbia University over a seven year time span stretching from 2000 to 2007.
Penn State Professor Duanping Liao stated that they found that there are significant links that show air pollution may increase the risks of blood-clotting and inflammation. These two factors are linked with reproductive health along with many other ill human health effects such as chronic conditions, mortality, and cardiovascular disease.
Researchers from the study feel their findings could be used to show how air pollution may damage human reproduction in general because IVF allows scientists to take a look of air pollutants on reproduction in a controlled setting.
Liao continued to say that the findings from the study could be used to look at how air quality plays a role in fertilization, delivery, and pregnancy due to the fact that IVF is a highly timed process with a high level of control allowing them to see the time of exposure to air pollutants in relation to reproductive factors.
Filed under: IVF — Alan @ 2:59 am
The UK’s first clinic that stands alone in that is solely focused on getting new sperm donors has opened as a merger of two sperm banks the Louis Hughes Sperm bank and the London Women’s Clinic bank. The new partnership will be called the London Sperm Bank which is fully licensed by the fertility watchdog organization the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA).
Dr. Kamal Ahuja, the scientific director of the LSB, stated that the new partnership will offer revived hope for the many women who otherwise may have trouble receiving fertility treatment due to a shortage of proper donor sperm.
The goal of the LSB is to extend its stock of available sperm vials up to 10,000 so that women will have both a wider choice when seeking donors and a speedier service overall.
At the present the LSB will serve all of the London’s Women’s Clinics but hopes to broaden its audience to other properly licensed fertility clinics throughout the UK by the year 2011.
According to the LSB website, the goal of the institution is to give all UK women the best choices among donors without worrying about spending money to travel abroad. Additionally, the website said that the LSB is supportive of the anxiety of the HFEA of women taking a chance by getting sperm from unlicensed sources.
One reasons for the current shortage of sperm donors may be the fact that donor anonymity was removed back in 2005 and the new right that children conceived using donor sperm may now request the information of the donor when they reach age 18.
March 18, 2010
Filed under: IVF — Alan @ 3:06 am
The Bridge Centre fertility clinic in London has teamed up with the Genetics and IVF Institute in the U.S. to offer more British women a chance to get pregnant. The basis for the cooperative move is to provide healthy eggs from female donors in the U.S. to women in the U.K. To promote this alliance, an egg is being raffled in London, with the winner to receive £13,000 in free treatments in the U.S. provided by GIVF.
Under present law in Britain it is illegal to sell human eggs for profit; the maximum allowed for expenses to donors is £250. In contrast, donors in the U.S. can receive up to $10,000 (£6,600) for a single egg. One result of this these policies is that more women in the U.S. are willing to donate eggs, and the joint venture circumvents British law by offering treatments in the U.S. to recipients of eggs from U.S. donors.
Egg donors are rigorously screened for health, stability and intellectual capacity, among other characteristics, and the actual process of donating an egg or eggs is not easy. It involves taking drugs to increase ovarian production, and has been described as a long and painful procedure, with potential harmful results to the donor’s health and future fertility.
Critics of the programme claim that it is taking advantage of donors’ financial need, and that most of the U.S. donors (all graduates or students at American universities) are motivated by the money they are paid. A spokesman for the Bridge Centre said that the decision to raffle an egg is one that was made by the Americans.
Filed under: IVF — Alan @ 3:03 am
The risk of stillbirth is increased in women who undergo fertility treatments, specifically IVF or ICSI.
However, whether the increased risk is due to the fertility treatments is still under investigation.
A study conducted by scientists at Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark indicated that the risk of stillbirth is four times higher after fertilization by IVF and ICSI than with other fertility treatments or ‘natural’ childbirth. Based on their study of 20,000 pregnancies between 1989 and 2006, researchers found a risk factor of 4.3 per thousand births overall, but that factor increased to 16.2 per thousand among women who had received either IVF or ICSI treatments.
The leader of the Danish study, Dr. Kirsten Wisborg, noted that they also found results to be similar in circumstances where the couple was fertile or just took longer to conceive, or after other fertility treatments. This led to the suggestion that some aspect of IVF and ICSI technology or another unknown factor may be the cause of increased risk.
While the risk of stillbirth is relatively very low, researchers agree that much more study is needed to determine the actual causes and whether they are related to specific methods of fertilization or to other physiological variations in the individuals.
The idea that infertility alone may not be the contributing factor in the higher risk category is one that interests other researchers very much, and will hopefully lead to more conclusive findings in further studies.
March 6, 2010
Filed under: IVF — Alan @ 4:23 am
Asda, the large supermarket chain, has announced that they will offer fertility drugs for sale without a profit, with the belief that it will cut costs for patients by hundreds of pounds. The grocer announced that their decision was based on a move to establish their pharmacy as one of the most competitive in the UK.
According to research conducted by Asda, around 63% of people are not aware that prices for private prescriptions vary depending upon which pharmacy they are filled at with an overwhelming amount of people, 76% to be exact, only using one pharmacy for every prescription.
The survey also revealed that a little over 90% of people had never taken the time to compare prices of prescriptions from different pharmacies.
Asda pharmacy has set its price of the fertility drugs at £1,171.41, which it claims will save most consumers around £820 compared to purchasing the drugs at a high street chemist.
At the moment, 71% of PCTs offer patients one or two free IVF treatments, after which most women choose to pay for one cycle or more out of their own pockets.
John Evans, the Asda superintendent pharmacist, stated that the IVF postcode lottery means that many women are forced to pay a high price if they need to continue on with IVF treatments. As over 80% of Asda’s customers are women, they felt it was only naturally to help reduce the high cost of IVF by offering the accompanying medication at a low cost.
January 19, 2010
Filed under: IVF — Alan @ 6:28 am
An IVF clinic has raised many ethical questions after it offered treatment to a woman who is 59 years old. Susan, Tollefsen, set a record for the offer as being the oldest woman in the UK ever offered aid with conception.
Private clinics usually follow a general guideline that they will not offer treatment for any woman that is past the age of 50 and the NHS stops offering treatment at age 39.
However, Mrs. Tollefsen, may now be able to get help conceiving from the Women’s Clinic on Harley Street in London, which for her be much more convenient, given she conceived her first child at age 47 with the help of a Moscow fertility clinic.
Tollefsen stated that she is still incredibly healthy and filled with energy so there is no reason why she should not consider having another child. She continued to state that while others her age are looking forward to retirement she is looking forward to taking her children to school and being a mother.
However, many people are concerned about how other pensioner parents may react to the news and that the law should enact an age limit to prevent a large influx of pregnant retirees.
Life national charity member Michaela Aston stated that if she gets the go ahead she will be treated, but that there needs to be an accountability and responsibility factor involved when it comes to parenting. She went further to say that having children after 60 is irresponsible and focused on self-interest and not the child.
January 7, 2010
Filed under: IVF — Alan @ 7:54 am
A new decision made by the NHS Sutton and Merton is raising controversy as it was decided that women that are in their late 30’s are no longer eligible for full IVF Treatment.
As of now the trust will now only offer a single cycle of IVF treatment to women that fall in the age range of 30 to 36 which is a vast difference from the two cycles that were offered to women between the ages of 23 to 29.
Even though the cut may be devastating for some women, it is better than the large initial cuts that were originally planned after patients and councillors raised accusations of ageism.
Health bosses said that the new cut had to be made in order for clinics to catch up with the waiting list of patients that is lengthy in the boroughs for those who need help conceiving. In the statement that announced the upcoming chance the NHS admitted that its plan only offer one cycle to women between the ages 25 to 34 was unfair.
Paul Burstow, Member of Parliament for Sutton and Chearn, stated that the issue is very emotional since IVF concerns women having the ability to conceive children.
He added that while decreasing the amount of cycles that can be offered to the women by one count may help the Trust save money but will be more damaging since it will reduce the amount of women that are able to help children.
Burstow continued to comment that only one in four women is able to conceive in just one cycle of treatment which makes the cut even crueller.
January 6, 2010
Filed under: IVF — Alan @ 8:00 am
A new report shows that there are possibly many mistakes being made at IVF clinics, however, the report is inconclusive since there is no solid evidence.
Government inspectors issued a warning about IVF’s, in that patients are not protected against mistakes, which led the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority to admit that there are ways that the clinics could improve.
However, the organization claims that they have made strides forward to fix the problems which will either be proved or discounted next week when the report concerning the embryo mix-up at the London Guys and St. Thomas Hospital is published.
The report will also test to see if clinics are regulated fairly by the HFEA which is another criticism that IVF clinics are facing from government inspectors.
The mix-up that led to the investigation occurred in February when three women had to have their embryos destroyed because they were fertilized with the sperm of the wrong men. The mistakes echoed the earlier mistakes of a clinic in Leeds which resulted in a white couple giving birth to a multi-race child.
The HFEA will not comment on either set of mistakes until the investigation report is released. A licence committee is due to meet on Monday to discuss what happened and where the mistake lay so that the same mistake can be prevented in the future.
Although the watchdog organization for IVF clinics claims that such incidents are still extremely rare a patient safety expert and a leading fertility lawyer warn that there could be more mistakes that are not reported.
December 22, 2009
Filed under: IVF — Alan @ 8:55 am
A new embryo screening test called PGD (pre-implantation genetic diagnosis) has been approved as safe for single pregnancy use, according to information compiled by Belgian researchers.
The researchers looked at a group of 581 children that were born at a Belgian birthing centre over the course of 15 years. Each of the children had been pre-screened with the PGD test. The results showed that the amount of deaths and birth defects were the same as children that were born using typical IVF methods.
The research comes in the midst of concerns that the process, which includes taking out some embryo cells at an early foetal stage, could result in problems during birth.
The Belgian researchers however, reported that when they compared their test subjects to 2,889 children that were born with IVF that did not include PGD, there was no difference in the amount of birth defect rates.
The study found that children who were born via PGD screening had a birth defect rate of about 2.1% while children that were born with other IVF methods had a defect rate of 3.4%.
There was a significant difference in the use of PGD for multiple births versus IVF however, with an 11.7% chance of death for those born with PGD and only 2.5% for IVF methods.
University Hospital Brussels Professor Inge Liebaers, stated that at the moment they are not sure why multiple pregnancies result in such a high death rate with PGD children, but that the numbers are not conclusive due to the small members of case studies.
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