It May Be New to the Times, But It Isn’t New

Today’s New York Times features an article ” Picture Emerging on Genetic Risks of IVF ” that starts like this:

Over the past thirty years, in vitro fertilization has been reassuringly safe. Millions of healthy children have been born and developed normally . . .

The article goes on to say that just now we’re starting to see some signs of harms related to IVF. This may be one of the first times we’re hearing of this in the news, but it’s not new. Just off the top of my head, I recall Cheryl Miller revealing otherwise in her 2007 New Atlantis article, ” Parenthood at Any Price .”

The procedures of [assisted reproductive technologies] can harm the very children they help to create. Infertile fathers often pass their infertility down to their sons. Prematurity is now the leading cause of infant mortality in the United States, in part due to the “epidemic” of multiple births to IVF patients. Multiples are twenty times more likely to die in the first month of their lives than singletons; those multiples that survive are more likely to have respiratory difficulties, learning disabilities, and other problems. Cerebral palsy, for instance, has become more common in the United States, even as its major cause, jaundice, has been all but eliminated. And even IVF singletons are less healthy than non-IVF children: they tend to be smaller and are more likely to be born with birth defects, including bowel and genital deformations and eye cancer.

So the evidence doesn’t show that IVF has been reassuringly safe—it’s just been reported that way. For years, mainstream media have not reported the negative effects of IVF for the same reasons they haven’t reported the negative effects of abortion and contraception on women: It’s politically incorrect to report on anything that appears to limit women’s reproductive choices. But all that does is make for less informed choices and a growing number of unhappy women, cheated by the news outlets and women’s health advocates they thought they could trust, who are now beginning to vocalize their discontent.