BitaTruble
Posts: 9779
Joined: 1/12/2006
From: Texas
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quote:
"....'splain it to me, Looocyy"......If you would tell me, sure, I'd like to know, Celeste. And I'll be the first to admit that I'm very ignorant about much of this.
Spares are frozen, destroyed in process or disposed of like.. trash. I vote for research rather than trash bins.
'With infertility affecting 2.1 million married couples in America, many have turned to infertility treatments such as IVF (in-vitro fertilization). Over the past 20 years, this technology has resulted in 150,000 babies born in the U.S. and one million worldwide. However, another result of such treatments has been the production of unused embryos -- 400,000 of which are currently in frozen storage.' From http://www.pbs.org
'After hormone treatment it is possible to collect an average of more than three oocytes (four or five); the individual response varies and on some occasions it occurs that more than ten mature oocytes are available for fertilisation. As in practice, only a maximum of three embryos are now transplanted at the same time (to reduce the risk of multiple pregnancies), there are usually "spare" embryos.
- This had promoted the development of freezing technologies, so as to keep embryos not transferred immediately for future attempts.
Embryo freezing can be achieved with success at any stage of development, starting with one cell (two pronuclei) to the blastocyst (around four days after fertilisation). Only a proportion of these embryos (60 to 80%) survive this procedure: in this case, they maintain their normal development capability, but the rates of success to be expected from routine use of such a technique are not yet known. The freezing of mature oocytes sometimes results in a reduction on the fertilisation rate, and an increased rate of abnormal fertilisation.
- As a consequence, IVF-ET produces regularly "spare" in-vitro human embryos. This definition, commonly used, consists, in fact, of two different situations.
The first one corresponds to embryos that will be transplanted later to achieve the purpose of the couple (or of another couple) to have a child. Such embryos are all frozen and the data available in animals shows that it is very likely that they can be preserved for prolonged periods of time without any prejudice to their viability. The second one corresponds to the embryos which will not be used to achieve the purpose of the (or a) couple; such "spare" embryos are in most cases frozen or directly used for research.'
From: http://www.ccne-ethique.fr/english/avis/a_008p02.htm#XIX
"BETTY ROLLIN: After the birth of their daughter Sara, Kurt and Robin Houk of Stow, Ohio, found themselves unable to have any more children. They turned to IVF (in vitro fertilization) and after their first attempt wound up with triplets plus seven remaining embryos, which were then frozen.
Couples like the Houks are faced with four choices: Discard the unused embryos, which is what most do;
From: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week644/cover.html
Celeste
_____________________________
"Oh, so it's just like Rock, paper, scissors." He laughed. "You are the wisest woman I know."
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