GESTIÓN EN SALUD PÚBLICA: Mother seeks to swap girl embryo for a boy embryo

domingo, 11 de noviembre de 2018

Mother seeks to swap girl embryo for a boy embryo

Mother seeks to swap girl embryo for a boy embryo

Bioedge

Mother seeks to swap female embryo for a male embryo

by Xavier Symons | 10 Nov 2018 |

A New York mother has attracted international media attention for trying to swap a female embryo for a male embryo via social media.

37-year-old Lisa currently has one five-year-old son, but says that she is desperate to give her boy a little brother. “My husband grew up with sisters and wants a boy too”, she told the New York Post. “This is the way we want to complete our family”.

The woman has one embryo left over from multiple rounds of IVF. She has left messages on several IVF-support group Facebook pages, describing the genetic profile of her embryo and asking to make a transfer before Christmas.

The social media posts have attracted much consternation, with one page removing her post following complaints.

Yet Lisa has received a reply from a Californian woman in her 40s who is interested in a potential swap. “She already has a toddler, and she has two male embryos left over,” Lisa told to the New York Post.. “Her husband … has six sons from another marriage and then they have a boy together”.

Lisa said that anyone who questions her judgement isn’t “walking in my shoes”. The woman and her husband Ray have spent more than $45,000 on mostly unsuccessful fertility treatments.

Embryo donation is only regulated in a handful of US states, and New York is not one of them. Donors must rely solely on private contracts.

Sunday, November 11, 2018

As sometimes happens, most of our stories this week centre on assisted suicide and euthanasia in various jurisdictions. However, our lead story is about Michelle Obama's revealing memoir, Becoming, which will be released this week around the world. In various pre-publication interviews the former First Lady discloses that after she had a miscarriage she and her husband resorted to IVF to have their two daughters Malia and Sasha.

When she was about 34, she realized that "the biological clock is real" and that "egg production is limited". "I think it's the worst thing that we do to each other as women, not share the truth about our bodies and how they work," she told Good Morning America. Perhaps her advice will prompt young women to try to have their children earlier. Somehow the message just doesn't get through: women can't have children whenever they want. Fertile women who delay having a family are probably the best clients of the IVF industry.