Last month, Nanfang Daily released a story about 43-year-old Li Duo (pseudonym), who already has a daughter but recently became obsessed with the notion of bearing a son to continue their family line. Considering the fact that gender selection is illegal in China – not to mention that, at 43, Li is already past her prime child-bearing years – it seemed like a pipe dream. Until, that is, she discovered that fertility clinics in Thailand offer IVF (in vitro fertilization), which would not only allow her to get pregnant at such a late age, but would allow her to choose the sex of her baby.
Author: ASRM News and Research
Why Women Can’t Stop Talking About Freezing Their eggs
Egg freezing — the process of extracting eggs and storing them for later — is an appealing concept for some women. It can unshackle a woman from her biological clock while preserving the possibility of getting pregnant later in life.
Young Female Cancer Survivors Not Clear on Infertility Risks
Many young women who survive cancer don’t understand how tumor treatments affect their reproductive health even though the therapy can trigger infertility, a survey suggests. Researchers focused on 346 women who were around 30 years old on average and had typically finished cancer treatment about five years earlier. At the time participants completed the survey, 106 women said they had been told they would not be able to become pregnant or carry a baby to term as a result of their cancer treatment, and 21 women said they had taken steps to preserve fertility before treatment such as egg or embryo freezing.
Why Insurers Oppose a Fantastic Proposal to Let California Women Have a Year’s Supply of Birth Control
On Monday, the California Senate is expected to approve a bill that would allow women to pick up a year’s worth of birth control pills at a time, instead of forcing them, as their health insurance companies so often do, to return to the pharmacy every month or every three months for refills.
Celebrities Are Coming Out for This Neglected Health Issue
Supermodel, author and “Top Chef” co-host Padma Lakshmi was diagnosed with endometriosis at the age of 36 — too late, she said, to save her marriage to author Salman Rushdie, and too late to avoid many personal and professional repercussions caused by a disease that often eludes diagnosis.
Weight Loss Doesn’t Help Obese Women Conceive Faster – Study(2)
Helping infertile obese women lose weight does not help them conceive faster, contrary to conventional medical wisdom, according to a Dutch study of 577 women.
World Report on Fertility Treatments Reveals High Use of Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection
The editor-in-chief of one of the world’s leading reproductive medicine journals has attacked the rising use of intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) for the treatment of infertility, following publication of the latest world report on assisted reproductive technologies (ART)
Is Egg Freezing Only for White Women?
A few months later, after an unsurprising breakup, I looked at the fading surgery scar across my abdomen — the remnant of surgery I had eight years earlier to remove uterine fibroids and treat endometriosis — and realized it was time to heed Ms. Rosalie’s advice. I started thinking about freezing my eggs.
Senate Moves to Approve Fertility Care for Wounded Veterans
Veterans whose war wounds have rendered them infertile are one step closer to having their service-related condition covered by the Veterans Affairs Department. The Senate version of the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs funding bill, which passed Thursday in an 89-8 vote, included a provision that would require VA to cover fertility treatments for the estimated 1,800 to 2,000 post-9/11 troops whose combat or training-related injuries have affected their ability to have children.
3-Person Embryos May Fail to Vanquish Mutant Mitochondria
A gene-therapy technique that aims to prevent mothers from passing on harmful genes to children through their mitochondria — the cell’s energy-producing structures — might not always work.