Currently, the most widely used artificial method of having a child is in vitro fertilization (IVF). A new way of conceiving a child will soon be implemented. This is the conclusion of a study conducted in Mexico and published in the journal Human Reproduction.
An alternative to in vitro fertilization
The objective of the study is to find an alternative method to IVF. “We now have a method that can produce good quality or better embryos than in vitro fertilization ”, welcomes Santiago Munne, author of the study. As a reminder, IVF is a reproductive technique that involves fertilizing a sperm and an egg in the laboratory. This study created three pregnancies which made it possible to conceive three healthy children.
This new technique consists of “share the pregnancy ”, notes the researcher. It’s about inseminating a woman with sperm so that she can fertilize and then extracting the embryos a few days later, testing them and re-implanting them in another woman’s body. To facilitate this manipulation, the women who participated in the research received injections of hormones to stimulate their ovaries to produce oocytes before being inseminated. This method is therefore different from that of the surrogate mother since the pregnancy is shared and that which allowed fertilization only keeps the embryo for a few days.
A method criticized and not without risk
This study has been the subject of numerous criticisms, notably concerning its ethics. The 81 women who participated in the study were paid $ 1,400 for artificial insemination. Attacks defended by Santiago Munne, specifying that everything was “valid” by various ethics committees, including the Western Institutional Review Board of the United States, as well as by the Ministry of Health of the state of Nayarit (Mexico).
In addition, some criticize this new technique by pointing the finger at the treatment of women. “It’s basically using a woman’s body as a petri dish ”, criticized Laurie Zoloth, bioethics specialist at the University of Chicago, in the journal NPR. In Le Figaro, Tugdual Derville, general manager of Alliance Vita, was very critical of this technique. “These women are used as test tubes, she laments. It is an instrumentalization of the body of the paid woman that is frightening to me. We are straddling the test tube woman and the surrogate mother, it is a very new transgression. We play the sorcerer’s apprentice with the female body. “
This method of assisted procreation is not without risk. Some women who participated in the study were forced to have abortions because it was impossible to extract the embryos during the “washing”.
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