Maggie Eastman considers it the worst decision she ever made. In 2003, beset by $30,000 in tuition debt and imbued with a burst of altruism, Eastman, a college senior, decided to donate her eggs to help an infertile couple have a baby. Over the next decade she donated nine more times, earning a total of about $20,000 — money that helped Eastman and her then-husband buy a house.
Tag: eggs
GOP Objection kills Senate Funding for Military Fertility Program
In January the Pentagon launched a pilot program that allowed U.S. troops to freeze their sperm and eggs before deployment. Defense Secretary Ash Carter lauded it as a way that service members could preserve their reproductive cells in case they suffered catastrophic wounds or merely wanted to put off having children. Now the program might be heading for a quick demise: On Tuesday, the Republican-led Senate voted 85-13 to approve a $602 billion military spending bill for 2017 that stripped funding for the program.
Draft Defense Bill Seeks to Scuttle Pentagon Egg, Sperm Storage Benefit
A single line in the Senate’s 1,166-page proposed defense policy bill could derail the Pentagon’s plan to give troops the option of freezing their sperm or eggs for future use.
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.
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.
Should You Take an at-Home Fertility Test?
For women who know they want to have kids, that’s a pretty grim thought, but it turns out to be even worse than that: We lose hundreds or even a thousand eggs per month through a process that’s like programmed cell death, says Owen Davis, MD, president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM). And even if you’re preventing ovulation with the pill or an IUD, those unreleased eggs don’t stick around — they die.
Decoy Eggs Used to Provide Birth Control for Mice
Scientists have created a novel method of contraception, using polymer beads coated in a special protein as “decoy” eggs in mice. In experiments described in Science Translational Medicine, researchers deposited the beads in the uteruses of mice. When the mice mated, sperm cells bound themselves to the fake eggs, preventing the real eggs from being fertilized. The scientists from the National Institutes of Health say it’s extremely unlikely the beads would be used in their current form as human contraception, but that they do show promise as a better way to select sperm for use in fertility treatments.
Breast Cancer Gene Might Lower Women’s Fertility
The BRCA1 gene mutation, which raises the risk of breast cancer by 80 percent, may be linked to having fewer eggs in the ovaries as a woman ages, the Australian investigators said. But a cause-and-effect relationship was not proven.
Fertility Benefit coming to Active-Duty Personnel Oct. 1
Active-duty military personnel will be able to freeze their eggs or sperm under a fertility pilot program beginning Oct. 1, a senior defense official said earlier this month.
Debate About Fertility Treatment Ethics as South African Company Flies Women to Australia to Donate Eggs
A South African company has sparked renewed debate about the ethics of some fertility treatments. The company recruits young women to donate their eggs and is heavily promoting itself in Australia.