Participation in investigational fertility preservation research: a feminist research ethics approach.

The goals and rhetoric of The Oncofertility Consortium [1] are aimed toward preserving cancer patients’ reproductive choices and facilitating their reproductive autonomy after cancer. While the end goals of oncofertility research are oriented toward safeguarding the possibility of biological reproduction for women and girls facing cancer treatments that may affect their reproductive capacity, considerable basic and clinical research is still needed in order for oocyte cryopreservation, in vitro follicle maturation, and ovarian tissue cryopreservation to become established fertility preservation techniques. In fact, at the time of writing, all of the professional organizations that have published guidelines on fertility preservation techniques consider embryo cryopreservation to be the only established fertility preservation method utilizing assisted reproductive technology (ART), while oocyte and ovarian tissue cryopreservation are considered investigational or experimental techniques that should only be offered under Institutional Review Board (IRB)-approved research protocols [2–8]. The Ethics Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) argues that additional research is needed to assess the safety and efficacy of these investigational methods in IRB-approved human trials with cancer patients [4]. Further clinical research with these patients will help to determine the optimal patient population, techniques for collecting tissue, and protocols for cryopreservation and in vitro follicle maturation [8]. In addition, human oocytes and ovarian tissue are needed in order to conduct basic research to establish the appropriate patient population, methods of tissue collection, and cryopreservation and maturation techniques that will help the oncofertility enterprise move these techniques from investigational to established methods of fertility preservation [3, 8].