A womb transplant was tried on a human in 2000, but the organ had to be removed after three months because of problems with its blood supply. But now surgeon Richard Smith (that's not him above) has developed a "vascular patch technique" that connects major blood vessels like the aorta. His team performed transplants in five rabbits, two of which lived for 10 months after the procedure. Examinations after the rabbits died showed the transplants were successful.

Smith said the next step is to impregnate rabbits to see how the transplanted womb handles pregnancy. Then he will try the procedure on bigger animals — if he can get the money. He's been denied grants from several medical organizations, perhaps because of questions about the usefulness of his procedure. A transplant could allow a woman to carry a child if she was born without a womb, or if the organ was damaged by cancer or another disease. But she would probably need IVF, as the transplant would raise the risk of ectopic pregnancy if she conceived naturally. And she would need to deliver by C-section because the transplanted womb would likely not hold up in labor. And of course, the transplant itself would carry risks — the womb would only be left in long enough for the woman to have a child, but during that period she would need to take immunosuppressant drugs. The whole procedure would be expensive and potentially dangerous, and Smith says, "There's a lot of dismissal in the profession in terms of this being a step too far in terms of fertility management."

It's worthwhile to ask what "a step too far" really is. Some people object to IVF because of its expense or because of the risk of multiple births. Others see ethical problems with surrogacy, finding it distasteful to pay a woman to be pregnant. But both techniques have gained fairly wide acceptance, and it's possible that womb transplants would too. Smith says, "for a woman who's desperate for a baby, this is incredibly important." His choice of the word "desperate" is a little questionable, but the popularity of IVF does show that many women — and men — who have trouble conceiving still want to have biological children. Womb transplants would extend this opportunity to a group of women who don't currently have it. While some opponents of fertility treatment advocate adoption for such women, that's far from a cheap or easy process either. If Smith's research succeeds, it will give women without wombs the same options as women with them — which seems, on balance, like a good thing.

Womb Transplants 'A Step Closer' [BBC]
Womb Transplants 'On The Way In Two Years' [Daily Mail]
British Scientists Step Closer To Womb Transplants [Guardian]

Saul's piece concentrates mainly on the fertility industry's inability to reduce the rate of twins being born to IVF recipients, and the difficulties that the pressures of mulitiple births have not only on a woman's body, but on the health of the children and on the economic system set up to support premature babies as they struggle with long-term intensive care hospital stays. "While IVF creates thousands of new families a year," Saul writes, "an increasing number of the newborns are twins, and they carry special risks often overlooked in the desire to produce babies."

The normalization of twins, Saul argues, which springs not only from celebrity births but from record numbers of twins being born in the U.S. each year, has contributed to a culture where the medical risks of multiple births are often overlooked. 60% of twins are born prematurely, Saul notes, adding that "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."

The fertility industry, however, is serious business, and a need to supply customers with a successful pregnancy leads many clinics to implant multiple embryos in order to increase their success rate, and as Saul notes, increase their chances of attracting new clients. "A busy fertility clinic can be extraordinarily lucrative, generating millions of dollars a year. And fertility doctors can take on godlike status in their communities for delivering their priceless commodities."

It is a heartbreaking piece, in that Saul speaks with many families who put themselves through serious financial, physical, and emotional strain to conceive children, and often enough, once those children are born prematurely, the stresses continue to take their toll. However, one gets the sense from all of the families interviewed that the ends justified the means, and that speaks to the real heart of the IVF industry—a desire for a child, no matter what it takes. All of these families, I'm sure, would tell you that the risks were well worth it. But the skyrocketing prematurity rates, strain on resources, financial hardships, and the difficulties faced by the children once they are born tell a slightly more pessimistic story.

One only hopes that someday the focus will be shifted to a more rounded measure of success; IVF shouldn't just be about implanting embryos for exorbitant sums and upping a clinic's success rate; it should be about providing families with a safe, healthy option where the focus is more on the safety and overall wellbeing of families, their children, and society rather than on cashing in a family's desires and hoping for the best.

[Photo by Kevin Moloney for the New York Times]

The Gift Of Life, And Its Price [NYTimes]

• Olympic gymnast Nastia Liukin has big plans for the 2012 games. "Just because I accomplished the biggest thing in gymnastics doesn't mean you have to call it quits. I still have the desire and motivation to accomplish bigger things. I know I have that opportunity to accomplish something that's never been done before. It's pretty amazing," she told the New York Times. And whether or not Liukin manages to grab another gold, we will certainly be seeing more gymnastics on television, thanks to a deal recently struck between USA Gymnastics and NBC. • Thanks to the ACLU, peace activist Sally Ferrell will now be allowed to teach students at the Wilkes Country high school in North Carolina about peaceful alternatives to joining the military. For years, Ferrell had been barred from the school by a board that called her activities "unpatriotic." • Inexplicably, men want to wear swimsuits that look like Bruno's lederhosen. "I sold 20,000 of them in just eight weeks," says an Austrian inventor. • It took much longer than usual for Chinese officials to check the IDs of a group of women returning from South Korea — because they'd gone there for plastic surgery, and didn't look like their passport photos anymore. • A survey says the average woman spends 16 months of her life crying. • To help you make your quota: Euna Lee says her daughter "is still a bit nervous about mommy going to work again. She told me today 'Mommy, when I ask you to leave (she meant 'come home'), please come home to me.' She told Doorie (one of my cats) 'Doorie, if you don't listen, mommy will go to the airport.' " • A Planned Parenthood in Spokane, Washington is accused of requiring unnecessary office visits, thereby charging Medicaid an extra $630,000. • The average age of first-time motherhood is rising around the world, to 25 in the US and 29 in Japan and Switzerland. • A Canadian woman who stabbed her husband to death was acquitted of manslaughter because of his "inescapable" abuse. • Dr. Sami David believes that IVF is being overused by lazy doctors. He suggests that part of this is due to sexism and ageism: "Once again, 40 percent of infertility is male factored. So why is the woman being pumped up with the drugs to correct the male factor?... bottom line is you should be seeing the man, sending him to a specialist. And frankly, that's the sexism." •

Belkin acknowledges that, while a mother can pass away at any time, women who give birth at older ages are "increasing the odds" that they won't see their kids grow up. She also says, however, that as technology makes it possible for women to give birth at older ages, "there's a feeling that [...] we need to control this." And that feeling, she believes, is misplaced. Karen Day, who gave birth via IVF at the age of 53, has a similar take. She asks why older moms are criticized so heavily, while "a 90-year-old man who just fathered his 21st child" gets less attention. Belkin points out that the 90-year-old man needs a younger woman to father his kid, and thus has a younger co-parent who will be around if he dies. But if the real issue is having someone to take care of the child, surely this could be resolved by encouraging older moms to involve younger people in their kids' lives — much as gay couples sometimes like to involve role models of the opposite gender.

Giving birth at 67, as the recently deceased Maria del Carmen Bousada did, has its problems, but the reason people are so up in arms may not have to do with an altruistic concern for the children. Belkin posted the NPR interview on her New York Times blog, and a commenter responded thus:

I think that if women gain the ability to bear children in their later years (thus truly retaining youth and vitality), society in general will find it much harder to brush older women off as irrelevant and unneeded. Older males will have fewer excuses for sniffing around skirts of women half their age, and will no longer be seen as logical opportunities, but rather selfish perverts. If women can still have babies in their 50s and 60s as men do, we'll have taken a giant step toward closing one of the most significant gender gaps that exists. True equality is the real fear.

In conversations about gender inequality, especially regarding relationships and age, people frequently throw up their hands and cite "biological realities." These realities are why women are supposed to consider their "market value" and settle down young, while men can do whatever they want. But if technology allows us to change biology, extending women's fertility, it will become less tenable to assert that a woman's "value" is tied up with her youth. The paradigm that women lose worth just as they become wiser, more experienced, and better able to speak up for themselves, may be subverted. And that, for many people, may be a scary thought.

When Is A Woman Too Old to Have Children? [The Takeaway]
Talking With A Mom Who Is "Too Old" [NYT]

While the bill was more or less gutted, it would prohibit cloning (and fertilizing an egg with material from another egg, which is technically possible) and it would only allow it for the treatment of infertility, which is the more problematic part. Saletan explains:

Resolve remains unhappy that the bill doesn't clearly permit IVF for "women who have medical conditions like kidney disease that prevent them from carrying a pregnancy, but who are not usually considered to have 'infertility.'"

But Saletan assumes that's more of an oversight than an agenda. The agenda, he thinks, is to limit or eliminate the creation of embryos for genetic testing.

That use is the screening of embryos for unwanted genes: preimplantation genetic diagnosis.

PGD began with screening for fatal childhood diseases but has gradually expanded to flaws that are less lethal, less harmful, less likely to cause disease, and less likely to strike early in life.

It's used for everything from screening for gender to screening for deformities to (supposedly) screening for physical characteristics like hair and eye color. Saletan considers it all a "slippery slope."

The bill is part of a nationwide project to regulate the emerging industry of embryo production. In one state or another-and then another and another-legislation will be filed to restrict IVF. Based on the Georgia experiment, these bills will probably make exceptions for infertility but not PGD. The battles, then, will be fought over which uses of PGD are acceptable. And these fights will be every bit as ugly as the preceding fights over abortion.

Regulating embryo production, as Saletan terms it, comes from the same religious movement that regards embryos as having souls — they're pushing personhood amendments and anti-abortion laws while seeking to eliminate federal funds for stem cell research and prevent cloning. So, I agree that it is a slippery slope, though for different reasons than Saletan.

This is one of those issues that will be hard for pro-choice advocates to fight. Most people are not keen on parents who abort girl fetuses because they are girls — and the religious people will argue that discarding embryos for the same reasons is equally bad. They'll argue that discarding fetuses because they're got brown-haired genes instead of blonde is as bad as aborting children for the same reason. And, as it is difficult to argue that sex-selective or eye-color-selective abortions are justifiable, the pro-choice movement will have difficulty arguing about the justifiability of PGD for reasons chosen by parents (or mothers) as opposed to governments. And then the government will be back regulating when and for what reason you can choose to make decisions about the contents (or soon-to-be contents) of your uterus. So the real question is whether you think you can trust to government to give you the choices it deems appropriate, or whether it is worth letting a few bad actors poison the choice pool.

Dish Respect [Slate]

Earlier: Nadya Suleman Is The New Poster Girl For Restricting Reproductive Rights

• A Pennsylvania man is facing criminal charges after throwing a party, complete with alcohol and a stripper pole, for his teenage son. The party was attended by kids as young as 14, and the father spent his time DJing and shouting "get on the pole" to the underage girls in attendance. • Media Bistro notices that all the major TV networks have male chief White House correspondents. • This story has all the makings of a sitcom: identical twin sisters Michelle and Teresa Frizziola are rookie NYPD cops. The 5'3" sisters are also fourth degree black belts in Goju-ryu karate. • An arrest warrant has been issued for suspect Ingmar Guandique in the Chandra Levy killing. • The remains of a medieval teenage girl who was decapitated for witchcraft are going to be given a Christian burial and funeral service. Nothing like apologizing 700 years after the fact! • Today is Girl's Day in Japan. The holiday is usually celebrated by displaying special ornamental dolls. • Today is also square root day: Celebrate by eating radishes, carrots or other roots. • This article debunks the 5 myths of fertility treatment. Short version: it's not easy, egg donors are risking their lives, and children born of IVF face serious health risks. • First "sexting," now this: "textual harassment." Stalkers are using text messages to send threatening messages to their victims. • The legal advocacy group that won their case for gay marriage in Massachusetts has filed suit today that seeks to extend federal benefits for spouses in same-sex couples. • Janis Ian talks to NPR about her famous song "Society's Child" and her newly released autobiography. •

The bill, titled the "Ethical Treatment of Human Embryos Act," is the most sweeping state legislation on fertility procedures introduced since Suleman gave birth to her octuplets in January, according to the Wall Street Journal. Republican state Senator Ralph T. Hudgens, one of the sponsors of the bill, said in an interview:

Nadya Suleman is going to cost the state of California millions of dollars over the years; the taxpayers are going to have to fund the 14 children she has ... I don't want that to happen in Georgia.

The proposed bill would limit the number of embryos implanted in a woman at one time to two, or three for women over 40. It also goes a step further, with limitations on the number of embryos created in the lab to the number being implanted. This would essentially eliminate a woman's ability to freeze her eggs, which is unsurprising, considering the bill was drafted in part by the Georgia Right to Life organization. The group's president, Daniel Becker, tells the Journal, "To us it's a human-rights issue," adding that embryos deserve legal protection "as living human beings and not as property."

Several scientific organizations are opposed to the bill because it would end embryo freezing, and because they say in some cases it's necessary to implant more than two or three embryos. Sean Tipton of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine says the lawmakers "don't understand the complicated medicine behind it." Currently, the organization urges doctors to transfer only two embryos at a time into patients under 35, and no more than five in a woman over 40, but the guidelines aren't mandatory.

Resolve, a national fertility association, also opposes the bill. Executive Director Barbara Collura says: "It's the right of the person who has gone through this procedure to decide what they can do with those embryos, not their doctor, and certainly not the government."

While up to this point, we've watched the Nadya Suleman story turn into a tabloid media circus, this legislation marks the beginning of the octuplets' birth spurring actual legal changes. Georgia lawmakers point out that other countries, such as Britain, already limit the number of embryos transferred per cycle. Other countries have found ways to reducing risky multiple births, but they've also adopted policies that don't severely limit women's rights. Hopefully in the U.S., as more states introduce limits on embryo transfers inspired by Nadya Suleman, lawmakers will consult with doctors and create legislation backed by fertility specialists that doesn't also seek to limit reproductive rights.

In-Vitro Fertilization Limit Is Sought [The Wall Street Journal]
Ethical Treatment Of Human Embryos Act [Georgia General Assembly]

Dr. Michael Kamrava, the doctor who helped Nadya Suleman become pregnant with octuplets, transferred at least seven embryos into another patient a few months after treating Suleman, reports The L.A. Times. The 49-year-old woman already has three children and is now five months pregnant with quadruplets. The woman is hospitalized at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, where she was transferred from another hospital because she doesn't have insurance. She spoke to The L.A. Times in a phone interview:

"Please respect my privacy," she said, adding that her circumstances are much different from Suleman's.

The woman has three grown children from a previous marriage but wanted another child with her second husband, who is in his early 30s and doesn't have any children, sources said. She works as an apartment manager; her husband is a contractor.

She started fertility treatments seeking one baby, but after becoming pregnant with quadruplets, declined medical advice to reduce the number of fetuses, the sources said.

The woman's situation is different from Suleman's. For a start, she's employed. But, having multiples is still very risky, and unlike Suleman, this mother's age is a factor.

"I do think it is concerning, and dangerous, especially to the mother. She is close to 50. When women get to be that age, our fear is the cardiovascular complications, such as stroke or heart attack. That's how serious this is," said Dr. John Jain, a fertility specialist with knowledge of the case.

Dr. Jain also appeared on The Today Show this morning, and explained that usually the age of the egg donor determines how many embryos will be implanted. In this case, the donor was 29, so only one or two embryos would usually be implanted. "It's just common sense, this is not what you do," says Jain in the clip below. "This is irresponsible, careless."

Nearly a third of in vitro births involve twins or more, but the government and professional associations want fertility doctors to reduce that number, reports the New York Times.

The American Society for Reproductive Medicine, the association of fertility doctors, even adopted guidelines in 2008 encouraging the transfer of only one embryo for women under 35, and no more than two, except in extraordinary circumstances. The guidelines allow more for older women, up to a maximum of five.

But unlike some other countries, the United States has no laws to enforce those guidelines. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a surveillance system that collects data on fertility clinics, but reporting is voluntary and there are no government sanctions for not reporting.

Part of the problem may be the way that the cost of fertility treatments are covered in the U.S. In Europe, where many countries have banned the transfer of more than one embryo, the countries also cap costs for in vitro fertilization or require health insurance to cover the procedure. One cycle of in vitro costs about $12,000 in the U.S., and since the cost is often not covered by insurance, doctors say they are urged by their patients to implant more embryos. "There was greater pressure for U.S. clinics to deliver, no pun intended, on the first try," Dr. David Hill, who runs a Beverly Hills IVF clinic, told The New York Times, "so they would put back more embryos, and hopefully one of them would take."

A recent Slate article argues that the way to reduce the number of multiple births in this country is actually to increase the number of IVF procedures being performed.

In 2002, Harvard Medical School researchers found, unsurprisingly, that compared with women who pay out of pocket, those whose insurance fully covered IVF were significantly less likely to have multiples since they chose to have fewer implanted embryos. And while international comparisons are fraught with confounders, it's worth noting that Sweden and Australia have almost twice as many IVF births per capita as we do, yet their infant mortality rates remain comfortably lower.

One contributing factor may be that in those countries national health insurances subsidize IVF. Sweden even creates an incentive to reduce multiple births by fully covering repeated IVF attempts if a woman implants one embryo, but limiting coverage if a woman chooses to implant multiple embryos.

The Nadya Suleman case has caused such a furor that she is reportedly receiving death threats, and police are investigating the hundreds of angry emails and phone calls she receives. It's obviously an extreme example and there are other deeply troubling circumstances surrounding her case. But perhaps the Suleman-inspired criticism being leveled against women and doctors who choose to implant multiple embryos isn't entirely justified. Part of the problem is that America has a health care policy that is encouraging multiple births. Slate refers to a study that found making IVF coverage mandatory for health insurance providers would only increase yearly premiums by about 0.1 to 0.3 percent, which amounts to about $20 per year. The extra money may even lead to savings overall, since less taxpayer money would go to medical costs for babies born with health problems due to multiple births.

The idea of limiting the number of embryos a woman can have transferred has come up frequently over the past few weeks. But only limiting the number of embryos transferred may solve the problem by penalizing the vast majority of IVF patients who don't want to have risky multiple births, but can't afford to spend $100,000 on repeated treatments. The United States does need to reexamine its policy on fertility treatments, but the country should adopt a policy that actually fixes the problem without vilifying women who just want to have a child.

Octuplets Doctor Has Another Patient Expecting Quadruplets [L.A. Times]
Birth of Octuplets Puts Focus on Fertility Clinics [The New York Times]
Pregnant Pause [Slate]
LA Police To Investigate Threats To Octuplets Mom [Breitbart]
An Estimate Of The Cost Of In Vitro Fertilization Services In The United States In 1995 [Pub Med]
Is 'Octomom' America's Future? [The Wall Street Journal]

Related: When Eight Children Is Seven Too Many [New Scientist}

While the parents of the octuplets delivered today probably wouldn't describe the birth of their children as "tragic" as The Daily Mail does, multiple births do pose health risks for mothers and babies. Multiples are often born prematurely and are more likely to have cerebral palsy or not survive the first week of life. Women who carry multiples have a greater risk for pre-elcampsia, miscarriage, and hemorrhaging. This month, the UK's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority enacted a new "single embryo transfer" policy, under which IVF doctors are limited to implanting one embryo at a time unless circumstances are extenuating. Under this new Code of Practice, all UK fertility treatment centers must have in place a documented strategy for reducing their annual multiple birth rates. Though the parents of the U.S. octuplets refused to say whether they received fertility treatments or not, experts believe they probably used fertility drugs taken before artificial insemination. According to Peter Bowen, a fellow of the Royal College of Obstretricians and Gynacologists, it is unlikely the mother used IVF because "no doctor in his right mind" would put eight embryos in a woman's womb. [The Daily Mail, HFEA]

In only the second live birth of octuplets in U.S. history, a woman delivered six boys and two girls on Monday at Kaiser Permanente Bellflour Medical Center by Caesarean section, according to USA Today. Doctors thought the woman was carrying seven babies, and were surprised when they found there was an eighth baby (a boy). The parent's names have not yet been released, but doctors say the babies weighed between 1 pound, 8 ounces, and 3 pounds, 4 ounces and were born nine weeks premature. Two were placed on ventilators that have now been removed, and a third needed oxygen, but they are all in stable condition.

"It's a risky decision to try to have all eight babies," said Dr. Richard Paulson, director of the fertility program at the University of Southern California, who doesn't treat the octuplets. "I would not recommend it under any circumstances, but I respect a parent's decision." The first set of octuplets born in the United States were born three months premature in 1998. The smallest died a week after birth and the surviving children turned 10 in December.

Dr. Mandhir Gupta, a neo-natologist caring for the new octuplets says the next week will be critical for the infants, who may be in incubators for six to eight weeks, and in the hospital for the next 10 weeks. "She's a very strong woman, so she probably will be able to handle all eight babies," said Dr. Gupta. But caring for eight children isn't simply a matter of a woman being strong or weak. The uterus is only capable of taking care of a certain amount of foetuses and multiples have a much higher risk of developing health problems or dying. Plus, taking care of eight babies is incredibly difficult for the parents, especially when trying to breastfeed all the babies, like the California mother says she intends to do.

Doctors usually try to get mothers who have had several embryos implanted during in vitro fertilization to reduce the number of embryos, but the number of multiple births is still high. While of course, multiples rarely do occur naturally, The Times of London reports that in 2004 alone 19,049 babies were born in multiple births of two or more, amounting to one in every 67 births.

The number of multiples born as a result of IVF may start to decline however, as doctors have developed a way to test the viability of eggs fertilization and implantation begin. Time reports that in two months, a previously childless 41-year-old British woman will give birth to the first baby who underwent the test. The main reason so many embryos are not viable during IVF procedures is that especially in older women, some eggs carry chromosomal abnormalities that make a full-term pregnancy impossible. Chromosomal testing damages the egg, but doctors have discovered that after eggs begin developing, half of the 46 chromosomes are shed and ticked into a genetic bundle called the polar body, which is safe to test.

While as with other procedures that genetically test embryos babies in the womb, the procedure could theoretically allow parents to test for genetic diseases or more trivial things. While some people are concerned the test could lead to people aborting babies with a certain hair or eye color, the test also holds the promise that a woman undergoing a costly and painful IVF procedure will be able to implant the number of embryos that she wants, rather than having to undergo several unsuccessful procedures, or implant multiple embryos and decide whether to reduce the number of embryos or deliver multiples in a risky pregnancy.

8 Babies Born To California Parents Who Expected Only 7 [USA Today]
Rising Multiple Births Carry Health Risks [The Times of London]
Building a Better Baby: A New In-Vitro Test [Time]

• Sad news: Lorene Rogers, former president of the University of Texas and possibly the first woman to lead a public university in America, died January 11th, at the age of 94. • Plastic surgery is on the rise in Britain, with boob jobs, abdominoplasy and "designer vaginas" leading the way. Ugh. • And this is not as gender specific as one would think: the number of "moob" jobs (reducing the amount of a man's breast tissue) has increased by 44% in the past year. • New research shows that the color red makes men feel "more amorous." •  Bromance among chimps? New study shows that male bonding is an important part of the adult chimpanzee life. • The rate of infant deaths due to suffocation or strangulation has quadrupled in the past twenty years in the US. Doctors recommend that parents avoid this tragedy by not bed-sharing and keeping cribs free of clutter. • India is struggling with a horrifically high maternal death rate, with as many as 450 deaths per 100,000 live births. Women in lower castes are the worst sufferers, since they are frequently denied access to even basic health care. • America's largest retirement community, The Villages in Florida, is reportedly a "widower's paradise," with female-to-male ratio at 10 to 1. Workers say there is a big black market for Viagra. • New data shows that the number of repeat abortions among British teens has risen 70% since 1991. Experts speculate that the rise in binge drinking could be partially to blame. • A research group in the UK is investigating whether consuming caffeine during pregnancy could lead to rise in the baby's risk for developing leukemia in childhood. • Although Americans are no happier than we were in the 1970's, the happiness gap (the gap between those who report being happiest and those who are the least) has significantly narrowed. • There are two weird stories today about giant baked goods: 1. A team of 55 Mexican cooks baked the world's largest cheesecake. 2. A sticky rice roll weighing more than a ton has been made in Vietnam to raise money for the poor. • And in other strange food news, the "delicacies of the Antarctic" (seal brain, penguins eggs), are off the menu at Antarctic bases, replaced by dried onion and split pea soup. • "Ladettes" (young women emulating their male peers) are responsible for an upswing in female crime, experts say. • The Martha Graham Dance Company is launching an internet-based global dance competition this year. The winning footage will be shown at the company's New York season in May. • Villagers in a small town in India recently married a young girl to a stray dog in a religious ritual. Fortunately, there do not seem to be any lasting effects of the ritual, and the girl is free to marry later in life if she so chooses. • Amphetamines have been found in illegal diet pills from South America. • A mother from Texas who allegedly abused her three daughters will not be prosecuted. The mother, suffering from Munchhausen's syndrome, brought her children to many different doctors, which apparently makes it difficult to prosecute the case. • A 41-year-old British woman will become the first to give birth after using a new IVF technique that screens eggs for abnormal chromosomes. • 

Image via Flickr.

And that's not all! Of the 50,000 embryos currently being stored in the United States, "Forty-three percent [of the women] did not want the embryos discarded. About 66 percent said they would be likely to donate the embryos for research, but that option was available at only four of the nine clinics in the survey. Twenty percent said they were likely to keep the embryos frozen forever," the Times says.

The cost of keeping embryos frozen is about $200 a year, which isn't much when compared to the cost of IVF treatments, which usually run to tens of thousands of dollars. Someone like Celine Dion, who has candidly spoken about her frozen eggs, obviously doesn't have to concern herself with costs.

Doctors say the major problem is that patients who have their embryos frozen are not given enough options up front. Dr. Anne Lyerly, an OB/GYN at Duke, tells USA Today that the issue of what to do with extra embryos should "absolutely should be raised at the beginning" of fertility treatments, and adds that the storage bill should mention it. And the Times notes that some parents even want unconventional embryo disposals that include "holding a small ceremony during the thawing and disposal of the embryos, or having them placed in the woman’s body at a time in her cycle when she would probably not become pregnant, so that they would die naturally."

All of this is sticky business when it comes to theories of personhood and the choice ramifications that go along with it. According to EurekAlert, This study "reveals previously unexplored concerns that patients have about their embryos, and it comes at a time when several states and even the federal government are attempting to enact legislation that would either assert an embryo is a person, allow abandoned embryos to be adopted by another couple, or allow unused embryos to become 'wards of the state.'" First world problems, people. First world problems.

Parents Torn Over Fate of Frozen Embryos [NY Times]
Céline Dion Candid About Having More Kids [People]
Fertility Patients Unsure What To Do With Leftover Embryos [USA Today]
Largest Study Of Fertility Patients Shows Concerns About Embryo Disposition [EurekAlert]

Earlier: Writer, Socialite Explains Her "Mad Desire" For A Baby Through Surrogacy

It shocked me that the PGD testing is legal in the U.S., because there is so much debate when it comes to extensive prenatal testing. But then I realized that PGD tests the eggs before they're implanted, rather than after, so this testing doesn't ever lead to abortion — only to more babies. And who can get mad or moral about more babies?

But back to Britain, where PGD is still only allowed to determine fetal abnormalities. McBeth went undercover to investigate a Turkish clinic, the Jinemed Center, that promised her PGD…except that PGD is illegal in Turkey, as well. "Many patients who were planning to go abroad were completely confused as to where it was legal and where it wasn't," McBeth says. In addition, the Jinemed Center "said they normally put in three embryos. That rang alarm bells. The maximum in the UK is two and most doctors would like to see that reduced to one because multiple pregnancy is the single greatest risk with IVF."

The Jinemed Center is now under investigation by the Turkish government, thanks to the undercover camera McBeth brought into a consultation with Jinemed representatives. "Proof if needed that the desire to complete a family with a son or a daughter by going down the 'high tech' route could turn into a legal nightmare," she notes.

Parents Queue To Select Baby Gender [BBC]
Pre-Birth Defects [Slate]

Earlier: Advances In Prenatal Testing Create New Twist In Abortion Debate

Related: Many Clinics Use Genetic Diagnosis To Choose Sex [NPR]

Of all those advancements, I was most interested in the comments by Alan Trounson, an IVF pioneer and director of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine in San Francisco. Trounson said, "I think there will be a further expansion of low-cost IVF, especially for women in developing countries who experience social discrimination with infertility. If you remove all the expensive stuff and use low-cost drugs (such as clomiphene) and remove just one or two eggs, and only transfer one embryo, it can be done for less than $100." While I'm glad that these women in developing countries will no longer face the stigma of being infertile, it was upsetting that rather than help fight that stigma, doctors just want to pump them full of fetuses instead.

Creepiest sci-fi prediction? That we won't need real people at all to make babies! Scientists are talking artificial sperm, artificial eggs AND artificial wombs. I can't wait for the army of evil artificially spawned babies to take over the nation.

Is This The Next Baby Boom [USA Today]
The Future Of Fertility [Independent]
Making Babies: The Next 30 Years [Nature]

• A new study shows that most female child molesters were victims of sexual abuse themselves. • Jordan has charged a man who allegedly killed his sister for having an extramarital affair. • Stephanie Pearl-McPhee calls herself the "yarn harlot" and keeps an eponymous blog about knitting. • Some conservative British politicians want to bar lesbians from receiving IVF treatment unless the potential child would have a "male role model" involved. • In the U.S., paid maternity leave is a luxury, not a right. "The United States provides the fewest maternity leave benefits in both length of leave and paid time off," when compared to nineteen equally rich countries, according to Time. • Overheard at the gay rodeo: "This is an all-American sport, and we are all-American people." • Queen Elizabeth tops the list of Live Science's 10 Most Powerful Modern Women Leaders. Also included: Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, Angela Merkel, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.

So what is a single woman of (OMG) 35 to do? My mother was 23 when she had me, so I'm clearly not following in her footsteps. Then again, it's not like any of my closest friends have kids either. Anna asked me if I worry about being "too old." [I asked her nicely! Also: I am the same age. -Ed.] And my answer was: Only when I have to read stories reminding me that I'm too old! What's really infuriating is when doctors accuse women like me of "waiting." Like I'm just sitting here, daydreaming, waiting to get knocked up. Doctors in these articles love to say that the body didn't evolve to have babies so late. It's science. Science yes, but science that ignores the social and cultural forces at work. What if you're working on getting the rest of your life straight? Or haven't met the right guy? Or have the right guy but not enough money? Or have the right guy and money but aren't emotionally ready? Are you just supposed to have a kid anyway? Is the "wait till the time is right" attitude actually an unrealistic yearning and a spoiled-brat mentality? And is a woman who decides she can't wait any longer — and gets knocked up before conditions are "ideal" — really doing what's best for the baby? Not biologically, but logically?

Late motherhood: Why babies can't wait [Independent]
Bringing Up Babies, And Defying the Norm [Washington Post]

Related: Majority Of French Children Born To Unwed Mothers [Reuters]
Unfit To Be A Mother? [Guardian]