Variations in IVF laws fuel market for 'fertility tourism'

A global survey of fertility treatment covering more than 100 countries has revealed wide variations in international laws governing IVF, which are fuelling the growth of "fertility tourism".

At least 10,000 people go abroad each year to seek help to have a baby because the laws are too restrictive in their home country or the cost of treatment is too high.

No other field of medicine is subject to such wide differences in clinical practice, which are driven by social and religious attitudes rather than scientific evidence.

Experts at the World Congress on Fertility in Munich announced a code of practice on cross-border care, to be published by the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) and the International Federation of Fertility Societies (IFFS) later this year.

Professor Ian Cooke, education director of IFFS, said: "What is considered acceptable varies from country to country. How carefully do they screen donors? How do they screen for multiple pregnancies? Do you want to come back with quadruplets? That's madness."

Both international organisations support the right of patients to go abroad. But they call for the harmonisation of national standards to increase safety.

In Britain, the chief reason for patients travelling is the shortage of egg donors, with waiting lists of up to two years in some clinics. Favoured destinations are Spain and the Czech Republic, where egg donors are paid €900 ($1600) and €800 respectively.

In Britain, regulations limit clinics to paying a maximum of £250 ($528) in compensation for lost earnings to egg donors.

Sperm donors are also in short supply in the UK, since donor anonymity was ended in 2005. Some couples travel abroad to obtain anonymous sperm. Cost is also a factor, with an average price of more than £3000 per cycle of IVF treatment in London. "It may well be cheaper to go to Barcelona or Prague and have a cycle of treatment there," Cooke said.

Dr Francoise Shenfield, co-ordinator of the ESHRE committee on cross-border reproductive care, said multiple pregnancy posed the biggest threat to patients. The UK restricts clinics to replacing at most two embryos in women up to the age of 40 but other countries allow up to four. Evidence shows multiple pregnancies carry higher risks for mother and babies.

"There is a striking difference between patients who had been abroad and those treated at home in terms of multiple pregnancies. Every clinic should have a strategy to reduce them," Shenfield said.

The survey revealed the rapid expansion of fertility treatment with more than 500 clinics in India and more than 600 in Japan.

Facebook Is Trying To Register The Word “Face” As A Trademark

First Facebook didn't want anyone else to have the word "book" in the name of his or her online community and now it doesn't want anyone to have the word "face" either. Facebook has apparently taken over the trademark application for "Face" from a company who operated a site called Faceparty.com and is trying to pursue the trademark. It won't be an easy task though, because Aaron Greenspan—the fellow who took Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to court over the creation of Facebook—is opposing the application according to TechCrunch: Greenspan now has his own company, Think Computer, which is behind the mobile payments app called FaceCash.

If Facebook gets the trademark for the word "Face," that could spell trouble for FaceCash. "The possible registration has implications for my company (not to mention hundreds of others, including Apple, Inc.), so I've decided to ask the USPTO for an extension of time to oppose it," he explains in an email. Apple, of course, owns the trademark to "Facetime," the video calling feature on the latest iPhones.

Although Greenspan owns the trademark to "FaceCash", he wants to protect his ability to use the word "face" in future products. He also wants to make sure Facebook won't go after him. Given it's track record of vigorously defending its trademarks (which it is encouraged to do by the law or else risk losing them), that could become a very real possibility.

Can't wait to see how this drama plays out.

Researchers Successfully Translate Brainwaves Into Words

In a recent study, researchers at the University of Utah successfully translated brainwaves into words, a huge breakthrough that could eventually give paralyzed patients a new way to communicate.

The trials, which involve placing a grid of electrodes directly on an epileptic subject's brain, are preliminary—only that one individual has been tested, and when the entire pool of words, ten in all, were used, they were only identified with 48% accuracy. But when limited simply to "yes" and "no," researchers were able read the brainwaves accurately 90% of the time.

Those results are extremely promising. Bradley Greger, a bioengineer at the University of Utah who worked on the studies, explains:This is quite a simple technology … based on devices that have been used in humans for 50 years now...We're pretty hopeful that, with a better design, we'll be able to decode more words and, in two or three years get approval for a real feasibility trial in paralyzed patients.

With some paralyzed patients' means of communication limited to blinking their eyelids or wiggling their finger, this research has profound potential.

IVF: Did India miss a medicine Nobel?

Robert Edwards of Britain won the 2010 Nobel Prize in medicine for the development of in-vitro fertilization, a ground-breaking process that has helped many couples over the last two decades have children. While Edwards was working towards his dream - creating the world’s first in vitro fertilized or test tube baby - a physician in India was working on the same subject but the odds were piled heavily against him.
Bengali doctor Subhash Mukhopadhyay was two months late in announcing the birth of Durga or Kanupriya Agarwal - India’s first test tube baby created by him on October 3, 1978. While Edwards, professor emeritus at University of Cambridge, was lauded for his efforts, Mukhopadhyay was fighting a hostile state government that rubbished his findings. Ridiculed and ostracised, Mukhopadhyay was also not allowed to publicise his work in the international arena.
He was invited by the Kyoto University in 1979 to present his findings during a seminar in Japan but denied a passport by the Indian government. The depressed physician committed suicide in 1981. Here are some facts about the man considered the father of India’s IVF research, who remained unsung during his lifetime but inspired many physicians after his death to bring his life and work to the public domain.

So who was Dr. Subhash Mukhopadhyay?

Born on January 16, 1931 in Bihar, Mukhopadhyay studied medicine at the prestigious National Medical College in Kolkata. He received his doctorate from Calcutta University in reproductive physiology in 1958. He obtained a second doctorate from Edinburgh in reproductive endocrinology. He was noted for his work on ovarian stimulation - he used the protocol successfully on Durga’s mother even before any scientist in the world had resorted to the method. He was also successful in his methodology of cryopreservation of a eight cell embryo.
However, the news of the birth of Durga, the world’s second test tube baby, was met with disdain and skepticism by his peers.
The only evidence of his work was a report he had prepared for the West Bengal government facing an enquiry. He was questioned by a government committee several times and his work was discredited as “bogus”. What went against Dr. Mukhopadhyay then was the fact that no physiological or biochemical technique could distinguish between in vivo and in vitro fertilised babies. He was transferred to the ophthalmology department of Calcutta Medical College in 1981 and prevented from completing his work on IVF.
Mukhopadhyay had no documented evidence and the credit for bringing his work to the public domain is largely given to Dr. T C Anand Kumar who was recognized officially as the first to deliver a test tube baby in 1986. Kumar went through Mukhopadhyay’s notes and credited the doctor posthumously for his pioneering work.Medical scientists opine that had Mukhopadhyay been allowed to publish his work and given adequate government funds and infrastructure to complete his research, he would have been recognized as the pioneer in in vitro fertilization process, hopefully paving the way for a Nobel prize in medicine such as his precursor Edwards.
The Indian Council of Medical Research in 2005 acknowledged Mukhopadhyay as the creator of India’s first test tube baby. Filmmaker Tapan Sinha, who was deeply impressed by Mukhopadhyay’s work, based his award-winning film ‘Ek Doctor Ki Maut’ on him.

In-vitro fertilization (IVF) for the poor

British scientist Robert Edwards won a Nobel Prize for helping develop in-vitro fertilization. Now, scientists are bringing the technology to the developing world.In-vitro fertilization is a fairly common method of aiding conception. But it's expensive, and only a small percentage of people around the world can afford it. Dr. Ian Cooke, one of the founders of the Low Cost IVF Foundation, wants to change that. His organization is trying to lower the cost of IVF treatment, to make it accessible to the poorest areas in the world.

"There's a huge need in many, many parts of the world," Cooke told us, including in parts of the world concerned about overpopulation. Infertility "leads to social isolation, physical and emotional abuse and ostracism and indeed suicide," Cooke says. The problem is also more widespread in the developing world. And in many parts of the world, according to Cooke, "particularly in rural areas such as Bangladesh, this leads to increasing poverty because husbands will not let wives who are not fertile work. And so they're even further diminished."

In the United Kingdom, IVF costs about $5,000, and it can be much higher in the United States. "We think that the technical side of it without the staff cost could be done for as little as $200," Cooke told The World. The organization would use cheap drugs and simpler incubation programs. "And because you have the intention of only transferring a single embryo instead of larger numbers," Cooke says, "laboratory costs are kept lower."

The organization has already started work in Tanzania and Sudan. "There end up being major staffing issues that need to be resolved so we don't have a long-term functioning clinic," Cooke says. At the same, he points out, "we've only been working on this in the last twelve months or so." So there may be opportunities in the future.

Alternative Commonwealth Games

Vatican continues to attack Nobel over IVF award

The Vatican kept up its attack on the Nobel committee yesterday for giving the medicine prize to in-vitro fertilisation pioneer Robert Edwards, saying he had led to a culture where embryos are seen as commodities.

For the second day, it kept up its public criticism of the choice of Edwards, whose success in fertilising a human egg outside of the womb led to "test tube babies" and innovations such as embryonic stem cell research and surrogate motherhood.

The Vatican ratcheted up its negative opinion as several leading Italian newspapers criticised it for its attack on Edwards.

A statement by the Vatican-based International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations (FIAMC), said it was "dismayed" at the choice.

"Although IVF has brought happiness to the many couples who have conceived through this process, it has done so at enormous cost," the federation said in a statement issued on Vatican letter head.

"Many millions of embryos have been created and discarded during the IVF process," it said, adding that embryos were being used as "animals destined for destruction".

"This use has led to a culture where they are regarded as commodities, rather than the precious human individuals which they are".

A Vatican official’s initial negative reaction on Monday to the medicine prize being given to Edwards as "completely misplaced" was splashed on front pages of yesterday’s Italian newspapers, with some editorials harshly critical of its stance.

"The devil is not behind Robert Edwards, as the Church seems to suspect, but a passion for science and an attempt to satisfy the desire that women have for maternity," La Repubblica said in an editorial.

"Edwards helped – not damaged – millions of people," said an editorial in the Corriere della Sera while the leftist L’Unita sarcastically ran a headline reading "The Heretic" under a picture of Edwards with two infants born through IVF.

Yesterday’s statement by the Catholic medical federation said that "as Catholic doctors we recognise the pain that infertility brings to a couple" but that research had to be carried "within an ethical framework".