Ivf fertility treatment and reproductive information

Guys who are a little short on cash right now might be inclined to make a deposit of another sort … at the sperm bank. In an interview with Minyanville.com, Scott Brown, Communications Manager at California Cryobank, with branches in California, New York, and Massachusetts, said he has seen a 15 to 20 percent increase in potential donors, the majority of those listing economic incentives as motivation. At Biogenetics in Mountainside, New Jersey, men usually get paid 100 per sample. But a new option pays as much as 500 per sample if the donors enroll in a program called Open ID, which allows sperm recipients to meet the donors.Donating sperm is not as simple as walking into a “bank” and making a deposit. There are certain basic requirements that donors must meet for instance, they should live close to the facility, be within a certain age range between 19 and 39, and be in good general health.California Cryobank has even more specific prerequisites: men must be at least 510, undergo a series of interviews, submit to numerous semen and blood tests, fill out a family history, and have graduated from or be enrolled in a four-year university.Most sperm banks only accept a small minority of potential donors. Its easier to get into Harvard than Cryo, said Brown. We have a lot of initial window shoppers.

There is a quiet moment in the film Julie Julia when Julia Child gets the news that her sister is pregnant.

These findings were part of a field research that she carried out last month in Lhasa with the focus on Tibetan medicine.

Women pregnant through IVF in vitro fertilization in England and Wales are now permitted to name anyone as the father on the birth certificate. For instance, a married couple who conceived with the use of donor sperm can name the husband as the legal father, rather than the sperm donor.
But its lesbian couples who are welcoming the law most of all, as now birth certificates will be able to list two women as a childs parents. Previously the non-pregnant half of a lesbian couple would have to go through a complicated adoption procedure to become a legal parent of the child her partner carried.
The BBC News interviewed one couple who are very happy with the change. Eve Carlile, 33, and her partner Rosalind, 34, have been together for 12 years, and have two sons, age four and one. Both children were conceived by Rosalind using an anonymous sperm donor. Its brilliant that women in our situation will have full legal rights for the co-parent from the beginning, Eve told the BBC. Its fantastically good news. Hopefully it will have a positive effect on societys view of lesbian and gay people, because the government are basically saying that were okay, and perhaps people who are not gay will begin to think the same.
The new law applies to anyone having children on or after April 6, 2009.

About 10 of all couples hoping for a baby have fertility problems. Environmentalists say pollution is to blame and psychiatrists point to our stressful lifestyles, but evolutionary biologist Dr. Oren Hasson of Tel Aviv University’s Department of Zoology offers a different take. The reproductive organs of men and women are currently involved in an evolutionary arms race, he reports in a new study. And the fight isn’t over yet. “The rate of human infertility is higher than we should expect it to be,” says Dr. Hasson. “By now, evolution should have improved our reproductive success rate. Something else is going on.” Combining empirical evidence with a mathematical model developed in cooperation with Prof. Lewi Stone of the department’s Biomathematics Unit, the researchers suggest that the bodies of men and women have become reproductive antagonists, not reproductive partners. The conclusions of this research were published recently in the journal Biological Reviews. Favoring the “super-sperm” Over thousands of years of evolution, women’s bodies have forced sperm to become more competitive, rewarding the “super-sperm” – the strongest, fastest swimmers – with penetration of the egg. In response, men are over-producing these aggressive sperm, producing many dozens of millions of them to increase their chances for successful fertilization. But these evolutionary strategies demonstrate the Law of Unintended Consequences as well, says Dr. Hasson. “It’s a delicate balance, and over time women’s and men’s bodies fine tune to each other. Sometimes, during the fine-tuning process, high rates of infertility can be seen. That’s probably the reason for the very high rates of unexplained infertility in the last decades.” The unintended consequences have much to do with timing. The first sperm to enter and bind with the egg triggers biochemical responses to block other sperm from entering. This blockade is necessary because a second penetrating sperm would kill the egg. However, in just the few minutes it takes for the blockade to complete, today’s over-competitive sperm may be penetrating, terminating the fertilization just after it’s begun. Sexual evolution explained Women’s bodies, too, have been developing defenses to this condition, known as “polyspermy.” “To avoid the fatal consequences of polyspermy, female reproductive tracts have evolved to become formidable barriers to sperm,” says Dr. Hasson. “They eject, dilute, divert and kill spermatozoa so that only about a single spermatozoon gets into the vicinity of a viable egg at the right time.” Any small improvement in male sperm efficiency is matched by a response in the female reproductive system, Dr. Hasson argues. “This fuels the ‘arms race’ between the sexes and leads to the evolutionary cycle going on right now in the entire animal world.” Advice for doctors and marriage counselors Sperm have also become more sensitive to environmental stressors like anxious lifestyles or polluted environments. “Armed only with short-sighted natural selection,” Dr. Hasson argues, “nature could not have foreseen those stressors. This is the pattern of any arms race. A greater investment in weapons and defenses entails greater risks and a more fragile equilibrium.” Dr. Hasson says that IVF specialists can optimize fertility odds by more carefully calculating the number of sperm placed near the female ova. And nature itself may have its say as well. Sexually adventurous women, like females of many birds and mammals who raise their offspring monogamously but take on other sexual partners, help create a more fertile future. But not always, says Hasson and Stone’s mathematical model – certain types of infertile sperm race to the egg as competitively as any healthy sperm, and may block the sperm of a fertile lover. But whatever the source of infertility, Dr. Hasson, who also works as a marriage counselor, can’t recommend cheating, not even as an evolutionary psychologist. Infertile marriages can be stressful, but unlike birds, we have the capacity for rational thinking. He advises infertile couples to openly communicate about all their options, and seek counseling if necessary. Source: George Hunka American Friends of Tel Aviv Medical News Today

A British baby named Oliver has become the first in the world to be born after doctors used a new test that enabled them to select the best quality egg for fertility treatment.The test, called array Comparative Genomic Hybridisation CGH, allows scientists to examine eggs for abnormalities, and then select only perfect eggs for in vitro fertilization IVF. Oliver’s parents had undergone 13 failed IVF attempts and multiple miscarriages before receiving this treatment.Professor Simon Fishel, Managing Director of CARE Fertility Group, the largest independent infertility IVF provider in the United Kingdom, where the test was conducted, said: “Chromosomal abnormality plays a major part in the failure to establish a pregnancy. Full chromosome analysis may double the chance of success in couples who have a poor chance of conceiving or a history of failed treatments and miscarriage and maximize the chance of pregnancy in all couples.”However, Tony Rutherford, Chair of the British Fertility Society, wants to be sure that these new techniques are subject to further rigorous research. “The widespread use of this technology should await the outcome of such research to ensure we know which patients might benefit,” he said. “All too often we see groundbreaking news about techniques that seem to offer great hope, but fail to live up to expectations when applied in widespread clinical practice.

The American Fertility Association’s Dessert Learn, a free program designed to educate individuals and couples about their family-building options in a fun and relaxed setting, is coming to La Jolla, California September 21st. Those who attend Dessert Learn La Jolla will engage in a conversation with Theresa Erickson, Esq., of Erickson Law, about third party reproduction options like egg donation, sperm donation, and surrogacy.

According to the Vatican, hormones in the drinking-water supply may be responsible for sub-par sperm. Pedro Jose Maria Simon Castelli, president of the International Federation
of Catholic Medical Associations, said in a report in the Vatican newspaper LOsservatore Romano in January: We have sufficient evidence to state that a non-negligible cause of male infertility in the West is the environmental pollution caused by the Pill. More specifically, this report claims that waste runoff from oral contraceptivesin particular through womens urinehas polluted drinking water and contributed to a rise in male infertility.
The Vatican pronouncement has many women, men, and scientists upset. For one thing, there doesnt seem to be any scientific evidence to back up the assertion. Once metabolized, the hormones contained in oral contraceptives no longer have any of the characteristic effects of feminine hormones, says Gianbenedetto Melis, M.D., an obgyn and vice-president of an Italian group that carries out research on contraception.

Read about the various forms of alternative treatment like acupuncture, homeopathy and other holistic methods used for the treatment of infertility.

Dr. Sami David, co-author ofMaking Babies: A Proven 3-Month Program for Maximum Fertility,appeared on CBS’s The Early Show Wednesday to explain why he thinksin vitro fertilization IVF is being overused, and whynearly half of all procedures are unnecessary.
As a pioneer in the IVF field, Dr. David expressed his concern that doctors are not evaluating patients well enough or trying other treatments for infertility before turning to IVF.”I think it is overused. It’s being the first choice of treatment rather than the last choice. When it was first opening up in late 1970s, early 80s, it was meant to be the last resort. Now it’s a first resort. I think that’s an injustice to women,” says Dr. David. “I also think it can harm women in the long run. We don’t know what studies there may be in the future regarding health of the woman later on. And health of the babies too.”Dr. David also pointed out that the causes of infertility are equal among men and women, and that doctors need to look at all possible medical problems between the couple before administering fertility drugs to the woman.”First off, 40 percent of infertility is male factor infertility. If there is a sperm problem, the doctor should not be pumping the woman up with fertility drugs to make multiple eggs, but rather sending the husband off to see a specialist,” he explained. “You need to reach the root cause of their infertility, not just bypass it. If there is a problem with the man, it may represent a medical problem, a serious medical problem. Doctors are missing an opportunity to help the man with his medical problem.”