Gulf Pine Catholic

12 Gulf Pine Catholic • October 25, 2024 In Vitro Fertilization: The Human Cost In vitro fertilization (IVF) is marketed as a safe and effective way to help couples have children. However, it is responsible for well-documented inju- ries to children before and after birth, as well as to the health of women and the well-being of families. I. High Death Rates for Embryonic and Fetal Human Beings IVF clinics usually report their “success rates” in terms of births or pregnancies per 100 reproductive cycles. They have sometimes boosted their reported rates, and obscured the high death rate of embryos, by transferring two or more embryos per cycle to attempt one live birth. Deliberate destruction of unborn human beings may also occur before any attempt to transfer embryos to the womb (discarding embryos that do not receive a high “grade”), 1 and after implantation in the womb through “selective reduction” (targeted abortion) if more embryos sur- vive and develop than were wanted. • Some public statements wrongly suggest that a recent court ruling in Alabama, allowing parents to sue an IVF clinic for causing the wrongful death of their frozen embryonic children, is unprecedented. But in 2021, a jury awarded $15 million to families whose frozen eggs and embryos were destroyed due to the failure of a freezer that a California IVF clinic knew was defective. In 2018, at least 22 lawsuits were brought against an IVF clinic at University Hospitals in Cleveland for allowing over 4,000 fro- zen eggs and embryos to die because a remote alarm system to warn of temperature fluctuations had been turned off. “We understand that our patients are grieving and we grieve with them,” said the hospital system’s CEO. After five years of legal disputes, the lawsuits were settled for an undisclosed amount. Such cases are said to have led some clinics to improve their safety protocols. 2 • The federal government’s annual report of IVF success rates for 2021 (the most recent year avail- able) states that U.S. clinics attempted retrieval of eggs in 413,776 cycles. 12% of successful egg retrievals resulted in no transfer of a live embryo to a womb or freezer. The percentage of embryo trans- fers resulting in a live birth ranged from 24% (for women over 40) to 49% (for women under 35). The average number of egg retrievals needed for one live birth was two for women under 35, and 13 for women over 40. Overall, out of 413,776 reproduc- tive cycles, there were 91,907 live-birth deliveries (22% of cycles). Of all clinical pregnancies (detect- ed by ultrasound), 77% resulted in the live birth of one child (including multiple pregnancies in which only one child survived) and 5% in the live birth of more than one child, with 21% of children lost to miscarriage or stillbirth. 3 The European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology, reporting annually on IVF clinics across Europe that provide preimplantation genetic testing (PGT) to screen for genetically impaired embryos, concludes that in 2018, out of 5,191 embryos tested, there were 2,942 embryo transfers to a womb (57%), of which 1,673 produced a clini- cal pregnancy, and only 1,380 children were born alive (27% of those tested as embryos). 4 II. Risk of Health Problems for Children Conceived by IVF When IVF became available in 1978, critics warned that there had been inadequate animal test- ing and that risks to children were largely unknown. Enough children have now been conceived and born from the procedure to produce statistically signifi- cant data on the risk of birth defects and other health problems. The higher incidence of such problems was once attributed largely to the higher incidence of twins and triplets from IVF pregnancies due to transfer of multiple embryos (as carrying more than one child increases the risk of preterm birth); but recent studies find an independent effect from the procedure. In 2021 in the U.S., 18% of the live births from singleton IVF pregnancies and 88% of the births of triplets were preterm births; low birth weight infants ranged from 8% to 85%. 5 Another factor is the common use today in IVF clinics of intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), the direct injection of a sperm into the egg to boost success rates; this bypasses natural safeguards that prevent damaged or defective sperm from reaching the egg in a woman’s body. In the U.S., ICSI is used in 78% of embryo transfers. 6 IVF advocates once thought that use of IVF would reduce birth defects, by allowing for the test- ing of embryos for a wide array of genetically based conditions. But experts now warn: “The selection of embryos on the basis of these predictions is not yet supported by science.” 7 • A 2020 study found: “The risk of congenital malformations is approximately one-third higher in children conceived with the aid of IVF technology than in other children.” Included are malformations of the cardiac, musculo-skeletal, and genitourinary systems. The authors suggest that IVF techniques themselves, not only paternal and maternal factors, are partly responsible. Even IVF singleton pregnan- cies are 1.7 times more likely to result in preterm births, and 1.5 times more likely to result in low birth weight, than non-IVF pregnancies. 8 • In 2017, physicians at the University of Pennsylvania reached similar conclusions: IVF is “associated with adverse obstetric and perinatal out- comes as well as congenital anomalies,” and even singleton IVF pregnancies have higher adverse out- comes than non-IVF pregnancies. Like the German researchers cited above, they suggested that epigen- etic changes arising from IVF itself may be respon- sible. 9 • A 2014 study of the long-term health of chil- dren conceived through IVF found the following: “Otherwise healthy children conceived by IVF may have higher blood pressure, adiposity, glucose lev- els, and more generalised vascular dysfunction than children conceived naturally. These effects seem to be related to the IVF procedure itself rather than to underlying subfertility.” 10 • A 2013 study found no evidence of increased risk of some cancers such as leukemia, but children born through IVF had a two to three times higher risk for a type of muscle cancer and a type of liver cancer: “Significantly increased risks were found … for hepatoblastoma and rhabdomyosarcoma.” 11 • A 2012 study found that children conceived through IVF are at higher risk of premature cardio- vascular disease: “Healthy children conceived by ART [assisted reproductive technology] display generalized vascular dysfunction. This problem does not appear to be related to parental factors but to the ART procedure itself.” By contrast, “[v]ascular function was normal in children conceived naturally during hormonal stimulation of ovulation and in siblings of ART children who were conceived natu- rally.” 12 • Dr. Rosanna Weksberg, a University of Toronto geneticist, warned colleagues in 2011 that children born through IVF are “up to 10 times more likely” to suffer from rare genetic disorders such as Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome and Angelman syndrome, which can cause developmental delays, intellectual disabilities, and speech impairment. 13 III. Health Risks to Women Studies also indicate increased health risks to women who conceive by IVF, including risks from the use of superovulatory drugs to stimulate wom- en’s ovaries to produce many eggs at one time for the IVF procedure. These drugs have been associat- ed with an increased risk of some cancers and may lead to a condition known as ovarian hyperstimula- tion syndrome (OHSS), whose effects can include reproductive problems, kidney failure, and even death. • A 2022 study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association found that women who conceived with “assisted reproductive technology” such as IVF were much more likely than other moth- ers with hospital deliveries to suffer from “adverse obstetric outcomes” including acute kidney injury, arrhythmia, and placental abruption, even after cor- recting for cardiovascular disease risk factors and multifetal pregnancy.17 • In 2017, University of Pennsylvania research- ers who found increased health risks to children born following IVF also found increased risks to their mothers. These women had more hypertensive dis- orders of pregnancy (such as preeclampsia and eclampsia) and gestational diabetes. 18 • A 2013 study found that “women having IVF had 2.5 times the risk of borderline [ovarian] tumours compared with women having infertility treatment but not IVF.” 19 IVF: THE HUMAN COST, PAGE 21