Assessing the financial side of egg-freezing
by Michael Cook | 17 Nov 2018 |
Is egg freezing for social reasons cost-effective? An Israeli IVF specialist argues in Reproductive Biomedicine Online that while egg freezing is here to stay, few patients and doctors are asking hard questions about its cost, especially in the face of demands that governments support large-scale “fertility preservation” programmes.
Zion Ben-Rafael says that research suggests that social egg freezing is “only cost-effective with a usage rate of 50% or over, and when getting married is not set as a condition”. However, recent studies have found that the rate of using frozen eggs is between 3.1 and 9.3%. This prices the cost of “each extra live birth between US$600,000 and 1,000,000.
“As IVF is being privatized and business-driven, it is hard for experts to decipher scientific- from business-oriented claims,” he writes. “The fact that the sales agents of SOF are the same doctors who carry out the procedure and benefit financially carries a potential conflict of interest.”
He describes social egg freezing as a kind of insurance:
“where the full cost of the procedure must be paid upfront. Only those who have ‘bought’ the full insurance ‘not too early and not too late’ will have a chance of benefitting from its potential at a better cost. Early freezing is associated with higher success but lower usage percentage and lower cost-effectiveness and vice versa. Also, differences in social practices, such as women who attempt pregnancy only if married or after finding a known partner, might be a barrier as age advances. From a medical perspective, the woman ‘buys’ time and a sense of security; statistics shows that at an advanced age, the chances of marriage are slim. Hence, egg freezing and waiting to get married are somewhat contradictory, and such delay proves detrimental to the chances of ever using the eggs, thus decreasing the cost-effectiveness of the procedure. Understandably, some have dubbed SOF as a ‘lottery’.”
Sunday, November 18, 2018
Occasionally we tag one of our articles “reproductive revolution” because it exemplifies how far law and technology take us once sex has been detached from reproduction. This week’s tale comes from India. A team at Galaxy Care Hospital in Pune has performed India’s first successful uterus transplant. A 45-year-old mother donated her womb to her 28-year-old daughter who eventually gave birth to a healthy baby girl.
Arrangements like this are no longer newsworthy, but what made the transplant necessary? It turns out that the young woman had had at least two abortions and these had damaged her uterus. Frankly, I find this fertility-at-any-cost approach a bit bizarre.
But not more bizarre than some of the other stories: the Dutch sperm donor who may have fathered 1000 children, the Japanese man who is raising 13 children by commercial surrogates from Thailand, the 65-year-old German grandmother who gave birth to quads, the German zoophile who is in a “relationship” with his Alsatian because “Animals are much easier to understand than women” and so on.
The reproductive revolution was originally intended to give loving couples the joy of having children of their own. How differently it has turned out. As they say, “Like Saturn, the Revolution devours its children."
Arrangements like this are no longer newsworthy, but what made the transplant necessary? It turns out that the young woman had had at least two abortions and these had damaged her uterus. Frankly, I find this fertility-at-any-cost approach a bit bizarre.
But not more bizarre than some of the other stories: the Dutch sperm donor who may have fathered 1000 children, the Japanese man who is raising 13 children by commercial surrogates from Thailand, the 65-year-old German grandmother who gave birth to quads, the German zoophile who is in a “relationship” with his Alsatian because “Animals are much easier to understand than women” and so on.
The reproductive revolution was originally intended to give loving couples the joy of having children of their own. How differently it has turned out. As they say, “Like Saturn, the Revolution devours its children."
 Michael Cook Editor BioEdge |  |  |  |
NEWS THIS WEEK
by Michael Cook | Nov 17, 2018
Indian woman ‘borrows’ her mother’s because hers was scarred after abortions. by Michael Cook | Nov 17, 2018
Becoming a resource-wasting ‘epidemic’ by Michael Cook | Nov 17, 2018
Social isolation can even lead to changes in brain structure by Michael Cook | Nov 17, 2018
Settlement reached after five years of litigation by Michael Cook | Nov 17, 2018
Not part of a slippery slope, says IVF expert by Michael Cook | Nov 17, 2018
A very expensive form of insurance by Xavier Symons | Nov 17, 2018
The bill that would ban terminations after a fetal heartbeat can be detected. by Xavier Symons | Nov 17, 2018
The state government has appointed and expert panel to draft a bill. by Xavier Symons | Nov 17, 2018
A court has charged 18 people with violating surrogacy laws. BioEdge
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