BACKGROUND A number of disputes have arisen in recent years over the status of non-transferred embryos cryopreserved during in vitro fertilisation. One such case is that of Natallie Evans who in April 2007 lost her final attempt to prevent the destruction of embryos created with the sperm of her former partner. Ms Evans had been rendered infertile by cancer treatment, and the embryos represente...

The compromise position that accepts the use and derivation of stem cells from spare in vitro fertilisation embryos but opposes the creation of embryos for these purposes is a very weak ethical position. This paper argues that whatever the basis is on which defenders of this viewpoint accord intrinsic value to the embryo, once they accept the creation and sacrifice of embryos to benefit inferti...

we examined the demographic characteristics of couples, ovarian response and sperm quality to determine the predictors of clinical fertilization in ivf cycles. a descriptive and analytic study was conducted using data and biologic specimens obtained fatemeh-alzahra of babol infertility center from 2004 to 2005. only data from 315 women who had medical indication for conventional ivf treatment w...

OBJECTIVE To compare the outcomes of embryo development between oval-shaped oocyte as an abnormal morphology oocyte and a normal morphology oocyte in In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). METHODS This study was a comparative analytical study with retrospective approach which lasted from September 2014 until November 2015. For this study, we used secondary data (medical records) from 24 patients submi...

OBJECTIVE To medically and psychologically assess gay men seeking parenthood through assisted reproduction and to provide guidelines for the assessment. DESIGN Qualitative observational study. SETTING Academic medical center. PATIENT(S) Thirty gay males (15 couples) presenting for assisted reproduction using an oocyte donor and a gestational carrier. INTERVENTION(S) Semistructured inter...

This article provides a contribution to the debate about the processes of circulation of knowledge and meanings among experts and laymen regarding the status of human embryos in Portugal. It weighs up the expectations and concerns regarding the reliability, quality, safety and efficacy of medically assisted reproductive technologies. Individual interviews, aimed at exploring the complexities, s...

This study follows 40 older single-mother families created with the aid of sperm donation using either insemination or in vitro fertilization. The study is based on qualitative data obtained from the mothers 3 years after a previous study with these families. The mean age of the mothers at this time was about 47 years and of the children 7 years. The findings provide insights into the mothers' ...

BACKGROUND Knowledge about the lives of single women who choose to become mothers by sperm donation is very limited. METHODS This study comprises 62 families headed by formally single women who, following their decision to give birth to a child with the aid of sperm donation, by means of insemination or in vitro fertilization (IVF), used the services of one sperm bank in Israel. RESULTS The...

The morphology of embryos produced by in vitro fertilization (IVF) is commonly used to estimate their viability. However, imaging by standard microscopy is subjective and unable to assess the embryo on a cellular scale after compaction. Optical coherence tomography is an imaging technique that can produce a depth-resolved profile of a sample and can be coupled with speckle variance (SV) to dete...

priorities (Powell, 2002; Wadman, 2005). Europeans have their own problems with dogmatic thinking too, albeit arising from a different historical and cultural background. Consider the often-irrational positions taken by the Green parties, pro-life groups and environmental groups in Germany and England who indiscriminately reject stem-cell research or genetically engineered crops. Or the fact th...