Should The U.S. Limit The Number Of Embryos Transfered?
Everyone knows about “Octomom” and her octuplets born after in-vitro fertilization (IVF). That was an extreme case, but multiple births resulting from unregulated artificial reproductive technologies have skyrocketed over the last decade. The increased rate of twins, triplets and even higher multiples are due to in-vitro treatments and those women and infants are at much higher risk of pregnancy complications, premature birth and long term health problems.
New research, published in theJournal of Pediatrics, looked at admissions at just one hospital in Montreal, Quebec and found multiple embryo transfers was responsible for a significant proportion of admissions to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). These infants were born severely preterm. Six babies died and 5 developed severe intraventricular hemorrhage or bronchopulmonary dysplasia. The researchers extrapolated their data to the entire country of Canada and said that a universal single-embryo transfer policy would have prevented 840 NICU admissions, 40 deaths and 42,488 days in the NICU. The cost was $40 million annually. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*