The Dangers of Fertility Treatments

Art Caplan, a well-regarded liberal bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania, reports on a new study on the risks of IVF and ICSI:

An article just published in the highly respected journal Fertility and Sterility ought to give anyone thinking about using “test tube” baby technology pause. A  review of 124,000 children  born through two very common infertility treatments — in vitro fertilization, creating embryos in a dish and transferring them to a womb and ICSI, in which a single sperm is injected directly into an egg — showed large increase in the risk of having a child with a birth defect. The risk was 37 percent higher than that seen in children made the old fashioned way. That is a huge number.

The health risks faced by people conceived through reproductive technology must be considered alongside the personal risks faced by children who do not grow up in a stable home with their biological mother and father. Our society has been much more ready to grant to each person a de facto “right” to a child without recognizing any corresponding, limiting duty to see that every child is raised by his mom and dad.