A new method of pregnancy “simpler and less expensive” than in vitro fertilization could see the light of day and help families having difficulty conceiving a child naturally.
Currently, the most used artificial method to have a child is in vitro fertilization (IVF). A new way of conceiving a child will soon be implemented. This is the conclusion of a study conducted in Mexico and published in the journal Human Reproduction.
An alternative to in vitro fertilization
The objective of the study is to find an alternative method to IVF. “We now have a method that can produce embryos of good or better quality than in vitro fertilization”, welcomes Santiago Munne, author of the study. As a reminder, IVF is a reproductive technique that consists of fertilizing a sperm and an egg in the laboratory. This study resulted in three pregnancies that produced three healthy children.
This new technique consists ofshare the pregnancy”, notes the researcher. It involves inseminating a woman with sperm so that she fertilizes and then extracting the embryos a few days later, testing them and re-implanting them into the body of another woman. To facilitate this manipulation, the women who took part in the research received hormone injections to stimulate their ovaries to produce oocytes before being inseminated. This method is therefore different from that of the surrogate mother since the pregnancy is shared and the one who allowed the fertilization only keeps the embryo for a few days.
A method criticized and not without risk
This study has been the subject of numerous criticisms, in particular concerning its ethics. The 81 women who took part in the study were paid $1,400 to be artificially inseminated. Attacks from which Santiago Munne defends himself by specifying that everything has been “valid” by various ethics committees, including the Western Institutional Review Board of the United States, as well as by the Ministry of Health of the state of Nayarit (Mexico).
In addition, some criticize this new technique by pointing the finger at the treatment of women. “It basically consists of using a woman’s body as a petri dish (container for biological analyses)”thus criticized Laurie Zoloth, specialist in bioethics at the University of Chicago, in the journal NPR. In Le Figaro, Tugdual Derville, General Delegate of Alliance Vita, was very critical of this technique. “These women are used as test tubes, she laments. It is a remunerated instrumentalization of the female body that is frightening to me. We are straddling the test-tube woman and the surrogate mother, it is a very new transgression. We play the sorcerer’s apprentice with women’s bodies.”
This method of assisted reproduction is not without risk. Some women who participated in the study were forced to undergo abortions because it was impossible to extract the embryos during the “washing”.
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