In Vitro Fertilization and Genetic Screening
The first birth following in vitro fertilization (IVF) took place in the United Kingdom in 1978, and the number of IVF births per year has increased steadily since then. More than 35,000 infants were born with the help of IVF in 2000 in the United States alone, and more than 1 million infants have been born worldwide following IVF. Although IVF has become an integral part of fertility medicine, ethical and policy issues continue to be debated as technologies change and IVF becomes more common. Among the topics debated are those relating to the moral status of embryos, disposition of frozen embryos, use of genetic testing of embryos to detect the presence of moderate rather than serious genetic disorders, and the adequacy of regulation.
Technologies
For an IVF cycle, physicians stimulate a female patient with hormones to induce the release of more than one egg. When tests show the eggs are ready to be released, physicians remove the eggs in an office procedure, fertilize them in vitro (in glass) with spermatozoa from the male partner or a donor, culture the fertilized eggs for two to three days to at least the stage of a four-cell embryo, and transfer the embryos to the woman's uterus for possible pregnancy.
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