IVF: Octomom’s
Doctor Followed Ordinary Procedure
Nadya Suleman
I have always believed that Octomom’s (Nadya Suleman) doctor didn’t do
anything that other IVF doctors don’t sometimes do, that is implant six
embryos. His biggest crime, for which his medical license is now
at risk, was to embarrass the sector because Suleman chose to carry all
of her 8 babies (two twinned) to term rather than abort some of
them, a routine procedure in IVF practice euphemistically known as
“selective reduction.” In other words–and boy, is this
ironic–abortion is a normal part of IVF infertility treatments.
That appears to be the case. From the story in the LA Times:
Dr. Jeffery Steinberg, an Encino-based fertility
specialist, testified Wednesday at a hearing held before Administrative
Law Judge Daniel Juarez in downtown Los Angeles, the most recent in a
series of hearings related to Kamrava’s medical practices. Steinberg
said he spoke with Kamrava and reviewed his records. He said he found
the records justified Kamrava’s aggressive treatment of Suleman because
she had fertility problems and Kamrava had a low success rate at
getting patients pregnant. Those aggressive treatments included
implanting Suleman with six embryos in 2006, when she became pregnant
with twins…
But Steinberg, who has been practicing for 35 years
and treats 200 to 480 patients annually, said many of his patients want
to become pregnant with multiple babies in order to have large
families. “In our eyes, those embryos belong to the patients and they
have to make decisions about them,” Steinberg said. Kamrava has said he
counseled Suleman about reducing the number of fetuses and attempted to
follow up with her after she became pregnant, but was unable to reach
her. “Fetal reduction remains as our safety net with in vitro
fertilization,” Steinberg said. “We counsel them in advance about
options and alternatives and ways to manage, and that’s essentially
what went on here.”
I recall speaking several years ago at a bioethics conference in
Banf. A Canadian bioethicist complained that the government
didn’t pay for some aspects of IVF (I don’t recall the specifics), and
then noted that abortion was a necessary part of IVF, stating, “We turn
triplets into twins.” In my comments, I said that I thought we
should be honest about these things, not euphemistic. Thus, the
triplets weren’t really turned into twins: They remained triplets with
one dead sibling.
It seems to me that Steinberg’s testimony reflects a
deprofessionalization of medicine within the sector by turning
fertility physicians into mere order takers. Indeed, we now see
that practitioners can’t legally restrict their practices to infertile
married couples in order not to be discriminatory. More to the
point, consider the crass view of embryos and fetuses these practices
reflect, as basically fungible produce until they are born. After all,
if we can make as many new human lives as we want, and destroy the
“excess” with impunity, it means that none of then had intrinsic
dignity nor were they considered unique beings. In such cases, survival
primarily depends on where the fetus is being carried in the womb.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Italy, for example, allows only 3
embryos to be made at a time for IVF and requires implantation of all
successfully created. That results in no selective reduction as a
normal part of IVF pregnancy and no hundreds of thousands of excess
embryos to be turned into mere instrumentalities, a mere resource ripe
for the harvest.
So, mass creation, implantation, and abortion aren’t necessary to IVF
practice. Rather, they are expedient–on several levels. Those are
two different things.
Contact: Wesley J. Smith
Source: Secondhand Smoke
Publish Date: November 22, 2010
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