Technology Diary 4: Clinical trials and the Fertility Industry

With all the technological advances happening everyday, people can live healthier and longer lives. This also means that women can have babies later in life and put their careers first and not be bound by nature. Women who cannot have their own biological children can still enjoy raising a family. Those with the means now have more options to select for the embryo that has the best chance of survival or better quality of life. I can appreciate the conveniences that these medical advances offer but upon further investigation, several issues come to my mind.

With the clinical testing, there come many key issues. The institutional Review board exists to ensure that there is no “coercion”, that the women joined the study on their own accord. However, by making compensations so high, many women are swayed by all they could do with that money and they do not think about the long-term consequences. Yes, they are making an important contribution to science and their peers when they donate eggs but who decides these prices? How can something as personal as a woman’s egg be placed on the capital market? But, there is a very real demand, both for knowledge and offspring, which keeps the fertility industry in business. Nor can these risks be explained with any sense of accuracy because the risks are still largely unknown. IVF treatments and other modes of fertility treatments have not been around long enough to know how these procedures affect the body. Many egg donors have experiences lower fertility rates when they are ready to have their own children, starting menopause earlier, and various forms of cancer including ovarian, colon and breast cancers. To ready their bodies to undergo egg donation, women must take large doses of hormones and putting these chemicals in their bodies and messing with the natural order of things has repercussions somewhere down the line. And there are so few IVF regulations in place that women do not know what happens to the eggs that do not get fertilized and get placed into the womb. These can and usually are used for research, which was not the original intention.