When Nadya Suleman, aka Octomom, revealed that her doctor had placed six embryos in her uterus during an IVF procedure, many called for laws limiting the number of embryos that can be transferred at one time. Some experts argued that the birth of a single healthy baby should be the goal of all IVF treatments.
But is it possible to impose stricter rules on the number of embryos that can be implanted into a woman’s womb? A recent NY Times article tackled this debate.
In-vitro fertilization, aka IVF, creates thousands of new families a year. The process by which egg cells are fertilized by sperm outside the woman’s womb is used when all other methods of assisted reproductive technology have failed. It’s often used when a woman over 35 years old struggles with getting pregnant.
About 48,000 IVF babies are born each year in the United States, according to BabyCenter.com.
While IVF helps create happy families, many of the newborns are twins, and “they carry special risks often overlooked in the desire to produce babies,” according to an article that ran in Saturday’s New York Times.
The Times reports:
While most twins go home without serious complications, government statistics show that 60 percent of them are born prematurely. That increases their chances of death in the first few days of life, as well as other problems including mental retardation, eye and ear impairments and learning disabilities. And women carrying twins are at greater risk of pregnancy complications.
According to one federal study, about 30 percent of all twins end up in a neonatal intensive care unit. Twins are eight times as likely as single babies to be born at very low birth weight–defined as under 3 pounds, 4 ounces. These are the babies who often need the longest care and face the biggest problems.
The government estimates that caring for premature infants costs $26 billion a year, including $1 billion for IVF babies, expenses that eventually get passed through the system and on to businesses and consumers.
In 2006, a record 137,085 twins were born in the United States, double the number in 1980. Of that total, 23,284 were the result of IVF, according to government statistics. The number does not include twins born as a result of other fertility treatments.
Why are so many IVF babies twins? To increase the probability of a successful pregnancy, doctors typically implant two to three embryos into the woman’s womb–even though the industry’s guidelines encourage the use of a single embryo.
Doctors insert multiple embryos because they don’t want to let down patients who are eager to start families, and their clinics will more likely prosper if their patients are easily getting pregnant.
The Times interviewed several experts, asking them if the U.S. should set stricter rules on the number of embryos that can be transferred. The majority of the doctors agreed that limits would ideally exist but they felt the U.S. health system and the country’s values wouldn’t support stricter laws.
Robert Stillman, a reproductive endocrinologist and medical director of Shady Grove Fertility Center in Rockville, Md., said, “Even though twin pregnancies carry risks, who is to define what is ‘medically inappropriate” in day-to-day clinical care? In our non-single payer health care system and in our national cultural context (with its paramount legacy of individual rights over those of the state), patient autonomy will almost always prevail.
Arthur Caplan, a professor of bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, said, “In a nation still deeply divided over abortion and the moral status of embryos, politicians have little interest and no stomach for opening up a public debate on any aspect of infertility treatments.”
What do you think? Should the U.S. have stricter IVF laws?