In case you missed it the first time, this post was republished at American Life League yesterday:
After the death of Robert Edwards, one of the British doctors who perfected in vitro fertilization (IVF), earlier this year, Miriam Zoll took a look at the legacy of third party reproduction, specifically the often overlooked numbers of failed treatments associated with these invasive technologies.
In 2012, according to the European Society of Embryology and Reproduction, 1.5 million ART cycles were conducted globally and 1.1 million failed (76.7 percent). In 2010 in the United States, data from the Centers for Disease Control indicate that 150,000 cycles were performed and 103,000 failed (68.6 percent). While the minority of grateful patients who do become parents celebrate Edwards’ legacy, the severe trauma of those fragile-hearted millions who experienced failed treatments, miscarriages, still births or emptied ovaries too often slip unnoticed into the mists of unrecorded history.
Reproductive medicine is still a young science. Many women signing up for treatments do not realize until later the extent to which they are participating in a vast experiment, where evidence-based medicine has yet to establish a reasonable foothold. Few, if any, longitudinal studies have been conducted to determine the health risks of women undergoing treatments and the babies born from them.
Babies conceived through IVF who are lucky enough to survive to birth have a much higher risk of developing genetic diseases and chromosomal abnormalities. As for the women, Zoll notes that risks include elevated rates of preeclampsia and blood clotting as well as ovarian, endometrial, and breast cancers. Then there are the sometimes extremely debilitating mental disorders when treatments fail, as they often do, especially for older women.