July 22, 2008
Jennifer Lahl speaks at Google about the dangers of egg-harvesting. Watch the video. Mary Eberstadt says Humanae Vitae got it right on sexuality and technology. A baby boomlet? A record number of babies were born in the U.S. last year. “Choice Mom” Mikki Morrisette asks what donor-conceived children...
July 22, 2008
Nature says don’t worry about “designer babies.” Not so fast, says Daniel MacArthur, a blogger at the excellent site Genetic Future: [I]t’s safe to say that there will be no perfect baby. Instead, the prospective parents will face a tough choice between embryo A, who will likely be tall, slim, smart and...
July 22, 2008
The London Telegraph has a series of articles on ART today, including a number of first-hand accounts from patients and donors. There are some great stories, but since I’m working on a piece about donor registries, I was most interested in the ones about the effect of the anonymity ban on donor recruitment. The answer is not...
July 21, 2008
Nature is not the only one looking back on the birth of Louise Brown. In the New York Times, Peggy Orenstein reflects on the history of IVF and the challenges ahead: Louise Brown turns 30 on Friday. These days, her name elicits little more than a mystified head shake. Who was she again? Let me refresh your memory: Little Louise was the...
July 18, 2008
Nature magazine’s July issue has a special feature on the 30th anniversary of IVF. After discussing the legacy of IVF (subscrip. req’d), Nature asked a group of scientists what the next 30 years of IVF research will look like. Among the predictions: Scientists will be able to create sperm and egg cells for anyone. Using sperm...
July 18, 2008
If you are in New York, you might want to stop by Lolita Bar next Tuesday, July 22nd. They’ll be hosting a panel, “Women Who Have Sold Their Eggs,” at 8 p.m. Panelists include graduate students Valerie Bronte and Diana Fleischman, Reason senior editor Kerry Howley, and “finance whiz” Marie Huber. The...
July 9, 2008
Melissa at Stirrup Queens has two great posts up. The first is about Jenna Nadeau Currier’s infertility memoir, The Empty Picture Frame. (Read more about Jenna in my article, “Blogging Infertility.”) Here’s Melissa discussing Jenna’s idea of parenthood as a “calling”: I felt strongly drawn...
July 9, 2008
A new IVF technique gives hope to infertile men. Frozen embryo babies are just as healthy as fresh ones. Affordable IVF comes to Africa. “The little boy with three mums (and they’re all sisters).” Men have a biological clock too. But who cares? They’ll just hit the snooze button...
July 7, 2008
What happens, if after pre-genetic screening, no unaffected embryos are found? Should they be transferred? And if so, who gets to decide? That’s the subject of a talk by Dr. Wybo Dondorp, a senior research fellow at the Department of Health, Ethics and Society at Maastricht University (The Netherlands), at the 24th annual meeting...
July 7, 2008
Much ado about nothing? A study by scientists at Cambridge University found that children conceived by a surrogate mother or by donor conception are as “psychologically well” as their naturally-conceived counterparts. The children were only seven years old at the time so I’m skeptical as to how much this survey really...