In Vitro Fertilization free essay sample

Robert Edwards was awarded with the noble prize in Physiology or medicine in 2010 for the development of the in vitro fertilization. Robert started his research on the biology of fertilization in the 1950s. According to the Noble Prize, â€Å"Approximately four million individuals have so far been born following IVF. Many of them are now adult and some have already become parents. †(3) Many couples worldwide were infertile, until Robert Edward came up with In Vitro Fertilization. â€Å"Edwards and Steptoe established the Bourn Hall Clinic in Cambridge, the world ? s first centre for IVF therapy. † Around one thousand children were born at the Bourn Hall Clinic The Bourn Hall Clinic in Cambridge is where the In Vitro Fertilization therapy takes place. The first historic event took place on Tuesday evening, July 25th 1978 at 11:47 p. at Oldham General hospital when Leslie brown gave birth to Louise Brown with the help of Ivf. She was a healthy (C Section) Caesarian section baby weighing five pounds, twelve ounces after a full-term pregnancy. (3) Louise Brown was born with blonde hair and blue eyes. Leslie Brown and John Brown were married for nine years and unable to have children. The reason why she was unable to have children on her own was because her tubes were badly destroyed by scars and inflammation, not even surgery was able to help her. According to How to get pregnant,p197† All that was required was to take an egg from her ovary; mix it with her husband’s sperm in a test tube, and then transfer the three-day-old embryo into her womb for the next nine months into a full-term baby. This creating In Vitro fertilization took many years. The two doctors Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards tried many different techniques on animals before they were able to actually use it on a human being. This is what the doctor has to do ,â€Å" determining the composition of the fluid in which the sperm and egg were to bathed, figuring out the best time to remove and implant the egg, and establishing how to monitor the hormone levels of the mother prior of the egg all required years of patient effort. †Ã¢â‚¬  How to get pregnant,† p197 In the 1970’s In Vitro Fertilization was thought of as unethical because of the United States Government. The United States Government rejected to announce the Americas’ first IVF clinic, which was in Norfalk and Virginia. Political organizations were against In vitro because they felt it damages nature. In vitro Fertilization (IVF) is a procedure that occurs outside of the body. The first step of this process is on the males’ behalf, where as he has to masturbate in order to obtain the sperm. The woman takes hormones to stimulate the ovaries to produce eggs, which are retrieved through a needle, the man’s sperm in vitro fertilizes the eggs, meaning in glass. The fertilization occurs in a glass dish called the Petri dish, not a test tube in spite of the name commonly used â€Å"test tube babies†. The embryos are grown in laboratory incubators for about two days before being transferred through the woman’s cervix into her uterus. The embryos have to be implanted in order for the woman to become pregnant. When creating a test tube pregnancy many of the females’ fertilized eggs are wasted. Multiple pregnancies are possible during this procedure these multiple pregnancies solve fertility problems. Cyogenic technology is what doctors use to freeze and store embryos resulting from IVF, women will not have the risk of having multiple pregnancies. The woman’s embryos can be thawed safely when they want to get pregnant at a later date. With IVF doctors were able to freeze and thaw human embryos successfully, these embryos resulted into happy babies, until they recently it could not be successful. Young female cancer patients who have destroyed ovaries can have their ovaries removed, frozen and saved until they are later cancer free, and ready to have children. This can also be done with individual eggs. The back up plan for In Vitro Fertilization is Intracytoplasmic sperm injection. Intracytoplasmic sperm injection is an injection of a single live sperm into the center of the human egg. This technique is for couples that have failed to fertilize with IVF. The female has to undergo ovarian stimulation with fertility medications so a number of mature eggs will develop. â€Å"These eggs are then aspirated through the vagina using vaginal ultrasound, and incubated under precise conditions in the embryology laboratory. † (1) A machine named centrifuging, or spinning the sperm cells through a special medium prepares the sperm. This separates the sperm. The single sperm is then inserted into a glass needle and then injected directly into the egg. According to University of California San Francisco Medical center, there are several risks associated with Intracytoplasmic sperm injection. â€Å"An increase risk of miscarriage, Heart problems for affected infants that may require surgery, Increased risk of behavior or learning disabilities, increased risk of infertility in your children during their adulthood. †(2) The Clinical importance of GnRH (stands for Gonadotropin-releasing hormone is considered a neurohormone, a hormone produced and released by the hypothalmus and controls the pituitary glands production of Gonadotropin. )release from the brain for In vitro fertilization. When the ovaries are stimulated to make more eggs by administering FSH (stands for follicle-stimulating hormone. This hormone is released by the anterior pituitary gland. In women, FSH stimulates production of eggs and a hormone called estradiol during the first half of the menstrual cycle. In men, FSH stimulates production of sperm. †) the tremendous increase in estrogen production over a normal level can be an early increase in LH(stands for Luteinizing hormone. The LH blood test measures the amount of luteinizing hormone. LH is a hormone released by the pituitary gland. In women, an increase in LH levels at mid-cycle causes ovulation) secretion. All certified programs are required to report their pregnancy rate results to the government. This is to prevent unskilled programs from continuing their practice with out the costumer attentiveness. But these programs have unfortunately came to appoint where they have started a marketing competition between different IVF centers to see who has the highest percentage of pregnancy rates, and this is their way of luring their costumers and patients in. In the United States this is not unlawful but the IVF programs do this anyway. According to the book â€Å"How to get Pregnant† The official government admonition is† a comparison of clinic success rates is not meaningful because patient characteristics will vary from clinic to clinic†. This means younger women with many eggs have better chances and results then older women with few eggs. † The chart below shows the age group and the amount of eggs that for the women during their pregnancy and deliveries. P. 45 How to get pregnant, Fewer than 10 eggs| 10 or more eggs| Age| Pregnancy| Delivery| Pregnancy| Delivery | lt;30 years old| 50%| 44%| 66%| 61%| 0-35 years old| 44%| 30%| 56%| 46%| 36-40 years old| 33%| 19%| 48%| 33%| gt;40 years old| 19%| 10%| 47%| 26%| There are new techniques like the Gamete Intro-Fallopian transfer, the assisted transfer of the woman’s eggs and the man’s sperm to her fallopian tubes, where fertilization may take place naturally. (Page 203 How to get pregnant) With ZIFT (stands for Zygote Intro-Fer tilization. The egg and sperm are transferred to the fallopian tubes and fertilization occurs in the tubes) the egg and sperm are allowed to fertilize before being transferred to her fallopian tubes. According to the novel Pivate Choices Public Consequence improvements are being made to allow microsurgery on the egg. This surery can be used to assist infiltration by the sperm to allow fertilization. â€Å" In september 1993 a baby boy born in Atlanta became the first U. S. -born child to be concieved through the injection of a single sperm into the mother’s egg. †p. 203 How to get pregnant Minimal Stimulation Protocal was developed by Japan to simplify IVF for patients. Mini-IVF is a enexpensive procedure. Minimal Stimulation Protocol IVF aims to produce several eggs for retrieval; mini IVF uses weaker medications or lower doses of medications to produce only a few eggs. â€Å"Mini-IVF is designed to recruit only few (but high quality) eggs, thus avoiding the risks of Ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS), reducing the cost of drugs from an average of $4,000 to closer $400, reducing the number of injections, and completely avoiding the painful progesterone injections. † This is how the procedure works. The third day of your menstrual cycle, you start off with a 50mg dose of Clomid, do not stop in five days as medications or doctors may say. Continue taking the medications until your ultra sound shows the follicles to be ready for ovulation. Your next step would be to take a very low dose of gonadotropin (150 IU of FSH) is added on the eight, tenth and twelfth days. There are different steps to this protocol. The first is going on Lupron to suppress the pituitary. While staying on Clomid you will block estrogen from stimulating your pituitary to release LH. Meaning you can be inducted to ovulate with an injection or nasal sniff of Lupron. In doing this u will avoid the luteal- phase defect that is caused by HCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) otherwise there is a requirement of progesterone monthly. The con to this procedure is that the Clomid has a temporarily negative effect on the uterus, because the Clomid blocks the estrogens support the development of endometrial lining. The expcnse of all of this technology is expensive. Thoes who have low income paying jobs are not able to afford these procedures and tratments. The average IVF cost is $12,000, but it may be as much as $15,000. It may be as low as $10,000. These prices are for one cycle of IVF. There will even be an additional cost for an ISCI treatment, which ranges from $1. 000 to $1. 500. Assisted Reproductive Technology the different procedures such as IVF, ZIFT, GIFT, and ICSI. These procedures involve egg donors, sperm donors, and a frozen embryo. When choosing an ART program the patient should have many questions about the cost, convenience and the details about the program, such as: 1. What screening tests are required, how much do they cost, and will my insurance cover these tests? 2. How much does the ART procedure cost including all drugs? 3. What is the payment plan? How much does it cost? 4. If my assurance accepts it will a bill sent to them? 5. What are the costs of embryo freezing, storage and transferring? 6. How long will this procedure take? 7. While you are in care how many physicians are involved in your care? 8. Are there people available at night to call, and if so whom? 9. How many eggs or embryos are transferred? In California a 34-year-old woman by the name of Nadya Suleman gave birth to octuplets. The octuplets where delivered by a team of forty-six doctors at the Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center in Bellflower. â€Å"The two girls and six boys ranged in weight from 1 pound, 8 ounces to 3 pounds, 4 ounces and totaled over 24 pounds. †(3) According to her interview on today NBC she is paying a large amount of money a month to support her 14 children including her octuplets, being that she is a single mom and not on public assistance.