Infertiles in the News

There are rarely good things about infertility in the news. It should come as no surprise to you that these articles really aren't positive in the aspect of infertility.

First we have the troubles of OctoDoc. The board has found that he is negligent due to transferring too many embryos. It is not popular to have this view in the infertility community (so I am preparing for the comments in the comment section), but I completely agree and do not believe that women should have more than 2 embryos transferred regardless of their situation (I saw that women over 40 can have up to 5, I can sort of live with that). I chose my RE in part because they said they will not ever do that for any patient, regardless of age. I felt that they were more interested in their success rates than money, which made me feel good and trusting of them. They said they mention it because some women want more, but it's not going to happen. I would prefer all doctor's functioned this way, but I'm not sure about laws.

Psych evaluations for ART procedures is something that I can't decide on. I do not think it's fair to analyze the amount of children she already had. No one has made the damn Duggar's go for a psych evaluation, so solely based on her previous number of children I would not think it ethical to require her to have a psych eval unless we made all human being who reproduce do the same thing. Her previous number of children should have come into play only because it shows that she can be successful with ART procedures so it is not necessary to transfer SIX embryos into her body.

On the other hand, I think a psych eval would be necessary because someone who could not deal with having extra embryos without having to use them all is not, in my opinion, a good candidate for such a procedure. IVF is a scientific medical treatment, if your beliefs cannot deal with the science aspect it is really not something you should do. We were not required for a psych eval, although I can admit I personally sought professional help to deal with my issues before I was comfortable doing IVF. I think it's a tough call. I know she feels that she could not live with "wasting" embryos, but she repeatedly did fresh cycles when she had frozen embryos available, so she had been "wasting" them herself for years.

OctoMom is such a bad example for us. Majorly bad. And so is her doctor which I hope people realize (although I know they don't) that most ART procedures do not occur like this and most doctors would not behave this way.

Next up, J. Lo! She speaks of her religion and how she would not mess with something like IVF because it is not God's will. Right . . . . I totally believe that a 40 year old got pregnant with fraternal twins and no medical assitance whatsoever. NOT!