Month: August 2012

Fertility Clock Headlines, Fertility Headlines

Danger, ‘In Vitro’ Fertilized Children May Be Born With Malformations

brigitte

(MADRID, Spain) – According to a recent study, infants conceived with the techniques used in fertility clinics are four times more likely to have certain birth defects and malformations than children that are naturally conceived.

Among the malformations that were detected are heart problems, cleft lips, cleft palates and abnormalities in the esophagus or rectum. These diseases appear once in every 700 births.

These dangers were increased by the use of assisted reproductive techniques such as fertilization ” in vitro”, which requires doctors to work with embryos and sperm outside the human body.

“I think it is important to consider the fact that there is a risk of birth defects,” says Jennita Reefhuis, epidemiologist from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention of Disease and author of a study published in the online journal “Human Reproduction”.

The doctor also said that although her study linked fertility procedures to birth defects, it was not able to neither prove the connection nor explain it. If the connection is real, it is unclear whether the procedures increase the risk of these malformations, or whether infertility itself increases these risks.

Moreover, Dr. James A. Grifo, director of the fertility clinic at the Medical Center of the University of New York, more research is needed to test these findings, since the study was only conducted on 281 women who had undergone the fertility treatment. Nevertheless, Dr. Grifo explains that the results are troubling, but a larger study must be conducted with a small group of patients. Read full article.

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Which Personhood Endorser in Colorado Will Be Ryan’s Role Model?

brigitte

Colorado is America’s personhood Petri Dish, where anti-choice activists first put a question on the ballot (in 2008) about whether to extend legal rights to fertilized human eggs, otherwise known as zygotes.

They lost and tried (and lost) again in 2010, and they’re trying again this year.

As the personhood initiatives have come and gone here, Colorado has seen the different reactions of politicians who endorse personhood when the eyes of everyday people turn toward them, when the wider population becomes aware that they’ve aligned themselves with the personhood folks, who even stand on the fringe of the anti-abortion movement.

As an endorser of personhood, Rep. Paul Ryan is suddenly in this category. Before being selected by Romney, no one except anti-choice activists knew Ryan had sponsored federal personhood legislation, which, among other things, would ban common forms of birth control as well as all abortions, even in the case of rape and incest.

So the question is, now that Ryan’s personhood cat is out of the back alley, what will he do?

Will Ryan, who supported personhood legislation in Congress, stand by his position? Read full article.

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Govt Backs Egg and Sperm Donor ID (AUS)

brigitte

IT is up to the states and territories to legislate so that Australians conceived through sperm or egg donations can identify their donors, the federal government says.

The government has backed a Senate committee’s call for donor information to be made available but says there is no constitutional power for the Commonwealth to legislate comprehensively in the area.

Last year in February a Senate committee handed down 32 recommendations, chief among them a proposal to introduce a national registry to contain donor information.

The recommendation, if implemented, would allow donor-conceived people to find out who their donor is once they turn 18 years old.

It also recommended donors not be able to identify their offspring unless the children gave their consent and siblings to have to give their approval to be identified to their half-brothers or sisters. Read full article.

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IVF Overhaul Proposed (UK)

brigitte

Same-sex couples and women aged up to 42 may soon be eligible for IVF treatment, according to new draft guidelines published today. The proposals were issued by the National Institute for health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) and featured prominently in the news, although they also include a range of recommendations not covered by the media.

NICE last issued full guidelines on IVF in 2004, but since then there have been advances in the drugs and techniques available. To take these changes and recent evidence into account, NICE has drawn up new extensive guidelines on everything from who should get IVF to the individual drugs that should be used.

The provisional recommendations include raising the upper age limit for IVF from 39 to 42 for some women and offering fertility treatments to same-sex couples, people whose disability prevents them having sex and people whose fertility might be damaged by cancer treatment.

Despite the tone of some newspaper coverage, the guidelines are currently at a provisional “consultation stage” where outside parties can voice their views on what should be included. The recommendations are not final, and could change significantly before they are officially published later this year. Read full article.

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Research Focuses on Evolution of Sex and Gamete Function

brigitte

The propagation of every animal on the planet is the result of sexual activity between males and females of a given species. But how did things get this way? Why two sexes instead of one? Why are sperm necessary for reproduction and how did they evolve?

These as-yet-unresolved issues fascinate Timothy Karr, a developmental geneticist and evolutionary biologist at Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute. To probe them, he uses a common fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster-an organism that has provided science with an enormous treasure-trove of genetic information.

“My research focuses on the evolution of sex and in gamete function,” Karr says. “I focus primarily on the sperm side of the sexual equation. I’m interested in how they originated and how they are maintained in populations.”

Karr’s current study, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Chicago, recently appeared in the journal BMC Biology. The study reexamines an earlier paper that analyzed the sex chromosomes of fruit flies during spermatogenesis-the process that produces mature sperm from germ cells.

While the previous paper, by Lyudmila M Mikhaylova and Dmitry I Nurminsky, argued against the silencing of sex-linked genes on the X chromosome in Drosophila during meiosis-a process referred to as Meiotic Sex Chromosome Inactivation (MSCI) -the reanalysis presented by Karr suggests MSCI is indeed occurring.

The work sheds new light on the evolution of sperm structure and function, through an analysis of Drosophila genes and gene products. As Karr explains, the research has important implications for humans as well: “The more direct, biomedical aspect is that when we learn about the function of a gene that encodes a protein in Drosophilasperm, we can immediately see if there’s a relationship between these genes and their functions and known problems with fertility in humans.” Read full article.

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1/3 of Child Cancer Patients May be Infertile in Adulthood

brigitte

Childhood cancer patients face an uncertain future regarding whether they have remained fertile, and a recent German study makes this abundantly clear.

According to findings published inDeutsches Arzteblatt International, as many as 30 percent of childhood cancer survivors are suspected of being rendered infertile because of their anti-cancer treatments.

Researchers collected data from 2,754 participants (1,476 of whom had been treated for a leukemia subtype, and the rest, for solid tumors). Of those, 210 agreed to undergo fertility testing, and infertility was suspected in thirty percent. Read full article.

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NJ Governor Vetoes Surrogacy Bill

ASRM News and Research

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie vetoed legislation yesterday intending to establish a legal framework for gestational carrier arrangements in the state. In vetoing the legislation, Christie argued that the state had not yet fully examined profound questions that surround creating a child through a contract, and that further study of the issue was necessary. The sponsors of the bill refuted the need for further study citing the year long legislative process which involved input from various stakeholders and public hearings on the issue.

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Childless lose out in quest for spare embryos

brigitte

EVERY now and again, Sarah Crooke wonders if people who look like her are relatives she has not met.

It crosses her mind because she knows very little about the people who provided the egg and sperm for the embryo that became her in an IVF clinic 20 years ago.

Aside from some notes on their physical characteristics and interests, Sarah only knows that a woman used donated sperm to create embryos and when she was finished having children, donated the rest to a couple, rather than dispose of them like many do each year.

Sarah’s parents, Karen Boyd and Terry Crooke, were the lucky recipients. After struggling for 10 years to have children, they were one of the first Australian couples to receive someone’s surplus embryos in 1993, including the ones that became their beloved twin daughters, Sarah and Rebecca.

A few years later, a couple in New South Wales who had completed their family gave them another embryo, which created their son William, who is now 13.

Ms Boyd, 57, remains eternally grateful for the donations and says she cannot imagine loving her children any more. ”I’ve treasured every step of the way,” she said.

Despite going through the process decades ago, Ms Boyd’s experience is still rare today. While the number of people donating embryos has steadily grown in Australia since 1990, only 36 babies were born as a result in 2009, including 17 in Victoria.

At the same time, demand for donations has soared. Researchers estimate demand is now outstripping supply by about 20 to one, meaning hundreds of people are on waiting lists at IVF clinics hoping for an embryo.

Research by lawyers at the University of Technology Sydney has shed some light on why so few are available. After surveying more than 300 people with embryos in storage, they discovered many had difficulty deciding what to do with those they were not going to use. For many, it was a confronting issue they had never considered until they got a letter telling them their storage time was nearly up. Read full article.