Ivy League Eggs Wanted

Egg donation is still very much a business on campus. Click here for full size to read it, though it says exactly what you think it says. These guys didn't get enough business from their ad in the campus paper, so they've put up flyers. Thanks Andy Gurmankin.

The Shame of Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis in Japan

This story is the latest on the humiliation heaped on Tetsuo Otani by the Japan Society of Ob/Gyn, and on his continuing fight to offer pre-implantation genetic testing for prevention of miscarriage. What makes the story interesting to me isn't the question of whether or not PGD should be offered only for prevention of serious hereditary disease, as the Society specifies. I think it is incredible that the role of the medical societies is still taken so seriously by the government in Japan; can you imagine what would happen if ASRM were suddenly to attempt to elicit government help to shut down an IVF clinic for offering big money to ivy league egg donors?

Major IVF Study by Genetics & Public Policy Center

Kathy Hudson and the gang reviewed an enormous pool of data - 2,500 papers - on comparative IVF/non-IVF incidence of hereditary or other disorders and found that there are slightly elevated, and greatly elevated risks. It will be interesting to see how this data is institutionalized in clinical ART care!

Kass Will Now Officially Say Anything

The Independent UK reports on Leon Kass' latest extraordinary statements. Kass is on the stump, although this time not so much for the President as against every nation that wants to do hES research using nuclear transfer. He is speaking on behalf of all the, um, yet to be created. "Britain is wrong. A woman's body should not be a laboratory for research or a factory for spare body parts. No child should be forced to say, 'My father or mother is an embryonic stem cell'." For what it is worth, there is no evidence that producing 5 day-old blastocyst-like organisms through nuclear transfer would make reproductive cloning any more likely to work. But the metaphor is great: little people alone and alienated, crying out "my mommy is a cell! my mommy is a cell!" The other members of the Presidential Bioethics Council must be so proud of this heroic effort.

Please, Someone, Teach These Journalists?

In the fiftieth poorly-researched assisted reproductive technology piece of the year, New Scientist lets us all in on the big news of the week: the Brits have "applied for a license" for something that is "banned" - yes banned - in the U.S., supposedly: "creating children with three parents." You have to be curious as to whether they just make these little snippets up...three person reproduction isn't banned in any national or even in any state law. The truly interesting thing is that New Scientist was able to miss any of the facts about the multiple egg issues in either the literature or even among those who work on these questions all the time. So get ready for a spate of "three moms" pieces!