Comment on this entry
When 8 is more than enough: It’s time for some meaningful regulation
Like a lot of people last week, I was shocked to find out that Nadya Suleman, the mother of the octuplets born last week in Los Angeles, already has 6 children—all between the ages of 2 and 7.
...
Complete entry
COMMENTS
Posted by Linda MacDonald Glenn on 02/03 at 12:18 AM
George, your points are well taken - this is reproductive autonomy run amok. The costs to the mother, the grandmother, the siblings, and children themselves, and to society, are overwhelming. I agree that it represents an abuse of the technology and is an illustration of the need for regulation and oversight.
Posted by Robert Taylor on 02/03 at 03:44 PM
ASRM and SART are voluntary organizations where only members need to report data. While they can revoke memberships, I don't believe they have the power to shut clinics down.
The CDC, however, has a mandatory reporting policy and, as a branch of the federal government, could enforce some kind of policy on maximum allowable embryos transferred per cycle. I, personally, think this is a good idea.
Interesting to note, that while the CDC and SART both publish annual reports detailing the national averages for things like average number of embryos transferred and percentage of live birth rate, they expressly prohibit clinics from making comparative analysis to other clinics or even the national averages.
With this in mind, we created a web site, based on the SART data that allows prospective patients to compare clinics on this very important data. We feel that while there are other factors to consider in choosing treatment, the comparison of success rates and treatment methods should be encouraged not thwarted.
Our IVF Success Rate Reports can be seen here:
http://fertilitysuccessrates.com
Posted by Nathan on 02/03 at 07:22 PM
I've heard conflicting statements on the number of embryos Ms. Sulleman had introduced; originally I had read there were three that multiplied, but here you say eight.
Could you shed light on that?
Posted by kbrd on 02/07 at 12:46 PM
Should we use outliers to define the parameters of this or any other debate about social policy? Outliers often provoke anxiety and anger. If this even is as rare as it has been portrayed as being, there is little to be gained to use it to define any sort of policy.
Posted by Russell Blackford on 02/14 at 08:47 PM
I tend to agree with WilsonD: we should be very careful before we use the existence of outliers as a reason to introduce even more regulation in an area like this. We might condemn what happened in this case, but it by no means follows that there's some mischief sufficiently widespread (or so damaging in even a small number of cases) that we need to enact legislation ... which immediately invites influential people and organisations to seek restrictions that go far beyond those that are strictly necessary to address the mischief. All our experience with the state suggests that we should be reluctant to let it get involved in reproductive decisions, even at the cost of a small number of people making crazy, or perhaps morally wrong, ones.
Page 1 of 1 pages
Add your comment here:
|
IEET Blog