Archive by category | American Society for Reproductive Medicine

Contraceptive craziness (warning you will enjoy politics or else)

Reproduction was hard enough. So today, just to throw a kink in things, a major focus at ASRM’s 2007 annual meeting was contraception. I didn’t make it to many of the symposia on the topic — too busy with preimplantation genetic diagnositcs. Nevertheless few choice comments came from an engaging, though poorly attended late morning panel on the politics of contraception, something that is largely only an issue for christian dominated countries like the US.  Read more

Advancing embryonic stem cells

At ASRM George Daley gave this morning’s plenary lecture to a dense crowd. He talked about the growing relationship between embryonic stem cell research and reproductive medicine and discussed the promise of embryonic stem cell research for basic discovery and, cautiously, for human health. But he made a point about the many complaints often voiced about the fact that ‘no cures have come’ from embryonic stem cell research, flagging this year’s Nobel prize winning scientists for the development of knockout mice.  Read more

Sprucing up the Masturbatorium

Sherilyn Levy the Nurse in Charge at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Center for Reproductive Medicine says that she knows what guys want. In ART, the woman’s job — from hormone injections, to harvesting, to implantation, and hopefully pregnancy and delivery — can be pretty harrowing. The man’s job is simple really, but Levy and a colleague Bonnie Campbell decided that B&W’s aging ‘men’s lounge’ an important part of most fertility procedures at the hospital, was due for an update.  Read more

The aging egg

I’m reporting from the American Society for Reproductive Medicine annual meeting this week, in Washington D.C. There are sure to be some controversial subjects discussed including the ethics and efficacy of prenatal genetic screening in assisted reproductive technology (ART), as well as a hot up and coming topic in the cryopreservation of eggs. In press conferences held this morning however, the interesting topic was a growing concern in ART, and one that has some controversial implications internationally. Timothy Hickman, medical director at Houston IVF in Texas, and others were discussing the justifications for transferring multiple embryos in older women.  Read more

ASRM: Global boy shortage

IVF has many flaws, but a new one to me is that it skews the sex ratio. A lot. Normally in the US, just over 51% of babies born are boys and 49% are girls – and apparently there has been a worldwide trend in recent years towards fewer boys. (Is a global boy shortage approaching? Panic.)  … Read more

ASRM: Not uncontroversial

“You can’t just do things with people’s tissues without talking to them about it,” said UK stem cell expert Peter Braude this morning. This, to a participant who asked whether it was OK to take embryos which women had given their permission to discard, and use them to extract stem cells. Ethicists must be squirming.  Read more