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More human embryos destroyed through IVF than abortion every year
More human embryos destroyed through IVF than abortion every year null / Credit: Shutterstock By Tyler Arnold Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Mar 13, 2024 / 07:00 am (CNA). An Alabama Supreme Court ruling that recognized the personhood of embryonic life sparked a nationwide debate about in vitro fertilization (IVF) over the last three weeks — but some people might be unaware that the industry’s death toll for preborn life is likely higher than that of abortion. IVF is a fertility treatment in which doctors extract eggs from the woman and fertilize the eggs with sperm to create human embryos in a laboratory without a sexual act. IVF can cost the couple between $20,000 and $30,000 for a single treatment. Because IVF treatments have a low success rate — about 50% for women under the age of 35 but significantly lower as women get older — clinics create far more human embryos than they intend to bring to term. Although this is meant to maximize the chance of the woman bearing one healthy child, it has also resulted in killing or indefinitely freezing millions of excess embryos. IVF clinics do not report the exact number of embryos that are killed in their care, but clinics normally extract between 10 and 15 eggs for one treatment. According to the IVF clinic chain Illume Fertility, if the clinic extracts 12 eggs, about 80% — nine or 10 eggs — will be viable and about 80% of viable eggs will successfully fertilize to create embryos — making about seven or eight embryos per patient. The CDC estimates that more than 238,000 patients attempted IVF in 2021. If clinics created between seven and eight embryos for every patient, that would yield about 1.6 million to 1.9 million over a year. Despite these high numbers, fewer than 100,000 embryos were brought to term, which suggests that somewhere between 1.5 million and 1.8 million embryos created through IVF were never born. Alternatively, the abortion industry claimed about 985,000 lives from July 2022 through June 2023 — suggesting that the IVF industry could be ending nearly twice as many human lives every year. Patients can freeze excess embryos for future use or adoption by other couples — but freezing the embryos can cost the couple thousands of additional dollars. Even when they are frozen, most end up abandoned. From 2004 to 2019, there were fewer than 8,500 live births from donated embryos. The United States has permitted IVF treatments since the early 1980s and estimates suggest there are between several hundred ...
Chinese 'have cloned 30 human embryos' | Daily Mail Online
Chinese scientists have created at least 30 cloned human embryos as a source of cells for medical treatments, it was claimed last night. The research makes them leading contenders in the race towards human cloning. The scientists say they have harvested 'stem cells' from human embryos that were cloned from eggs donated by patients at a fertility clinic. Work on stem cells, the body's mother cells that can develop into any kind of tissue, may herald a medical revolution. They could be used to produce perfectly-matched 'spare part' tissues for transplant - avoiding the risk of rejection as the cells are taken from the patient's own body Experts predict that treatments for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and diabetes could be available within three years. China's relaxed attitude to cloning has led to huge amounts of money being spent on research. But the breakthrough at Xiangya medical college, in the southeastern city of Changsha, will prompt fears that it could go a step further and produce a cloned human baby. A handful of teams around the world say they are working on implanting a cloned embryo into a woman, despite widespread revulsion. The Xiangya team say they have been cloning embryos for two years, with five per cent surviving long enough to have their stem cells harvested. Last year, scientists in Massachusetts claimed to have produced the world's first human embryos for medical research. But their best-developed embryos stopped growing after three days. Details of the Chinese claims are sketchy. Experts will be sceptical until they appear in a Western scientific journal. {"status":"error","code":"499","payload":"Asset id not found: readcomments comments with assetId=127836, assetTypeId=1"}
The end of sex? How human reproduction could soon change forever
Until about a century ago, humans always created embryos and babies in the same old, largely random way - through sex. Then some started using artificial insemination and, 45 years ago, in vitro fertilisation. Important as these technologies have been, they still involve human eggs and sperm. Thanks to stem cell technologies, though, that will shift.
Haploid - National Human Genome Research Institute
In humans, the egg and sperm cells are formed through a particular kind of cell division called meiosis where the genetic material of the parent cell is divided up twice, resulting in these haploid cells with only one set of chromosomes. When a sperm fertilizes an egg, the genetic material is combined in the resulting zygote cell.
