Soon women will be able to store tissue from their ovaries in special “banks” for future use. But is it really a good idea?
What is worth sacrificing for motherhood? Tens of thousands of pounds? Or maybe you risk a major surgery where your surgeon will take tissue from your ovaries and freeze it in liquid nitrogen at minus 190 degrees Celsius, and then implant it back into you when you decide to have a baby? A bizarre vision, somewhat reminiscent of ideas straight from science-fiction movies, in which women are treated as reproductive robots and their eggs are removed … But it seems that this vision may soon become reality.
Dr Gedis Grudzinskas hopes that within the next six months he will be able to open a clinic in London where – for an appropriate and definitely not a small fee – such an ovarian tissue bank will be built. Women will be able to “deposit” their tissues in it at the age of twenty or thirty (that is, at the peak of fertility) to “retrieve” them at a later time: when there is room for a child in their tense plans.
The entire procedure – so far only available in the US, Denmark and Belgium – has so far been used only in cancer patients who feared that they would become sterile as a result of chemotherapy. It is believed to be more effective than in vitro fertilization.
Dr. Grudzinskas wants this technique to be available to all women in the UK. Well, at least those with £ 16 (over PLN 80) to spend. “This procedure is much more effective than we thought,” the doctor says. – Women under thirty can freeze their eggs until they meet Mr. Perfect.
Oh, Mr. Perfect! Perhaps the next initiative of Dr. Grudzinskas will be to create someone like that in the laboratory? No, this is not as absurd as it may seem: earlier this year, scientists in Germany and Israel revealed that they would soon be able to produce human sperm in the laboratory. In Great Britain the value of the entire industry of infertility treatment is estimated at 500 million pounds (about PLN 2,5 billion), in the USA – at a sum five times higher. The number of in vitro fertilization cycles increased from 18,2 thousand in 1992 to 57,652 thousand in 2010. But is the introduction of the technique of freezing ovarian tissue a step towards making people’s lives easier – or is it an extremely costly and potentially very dangerous experience, combined with feeding on women who are afraid of being able to have children?
Prof. Robert Winston, the former head of the infertility clinic at Hammersmith Hospital, tends to be more of the latter. “I am afraid that the activities of many private clinics must be assessed very critically,” he says. – Such practices must be undertaken with the utmost caution and with the highest legal standards. I have serious doubts about every technique that creates the human egg market. We must remember that there is no guarantee that no damage to the genetic material will occur in such stored cells, resulting in damage to the fetus. I would not consider it an effective and reliable method of delaying menopause. Personally, I find the idea disgusting, but I don’t want to go to court for defamation.
Professor Winston also adds that the practice of freezing eggs is “feeding on trust.” – It’s just a simple trick – he comments. – A great way to get a lot of money from women, but much worse as a way of family planning.
Many private fertility clinics now offer complete packages of services – it looks a bit as if they are selling not so much the possibility of having children as an elegant all-inclusive holiday. Prof. Winston criticizes the unusually high prices these establishments are asking for. “A lot of what you do in these centers is straightforward,” he says. – Greed does its job. The NHS evaluates these procedures not on the basis of their real costs, but on the basis of an assessment of market opportunities. It’s a scandal.
The scientist is also very critical of various “experimental techniques” used in private clinics. – Nobody conducts random studies with a control group, and without such studies, we do not really know how these methods work – he explains. – Imagine that you go to the hospital to be treated for cancer and the doctor says: “We will apply this therapy because I think it can work.”
Dr Gillian Lockwood of the British Fertility Association is also skeptical about freezing ovarian tissue, even for women with cancer. “There is a theoretical possibility of replanting cancer cells together with ovarian tissue,” he says. – Moreover, this procedure itself poses a risk of damaging fertility. And yet in the case of healthy people who decide to take such a move for “social” reasons, the most important thing should be not to jeopardize their natural fertility. After all, most of these women can become pregnant naturally, and surgery on the ovaries poses a risk of impaired fertility, especially if it leaves scars or adhesions in the fallopian tubes.
“Freezing ovarian tissue is a risky decision,” says Dr. George Ndukwe, medical director of the Zita West’s Fertility Center in London. – That’s a bit, excuse the play on words, like carrying all the eggs in one basket. The whole technique has been used for a very short time, so far only 19 children have been born this way worldwide.
Another expert, who asked not to be named, takes the matter even more directly. “A really much better method of getting pregnant would be to take a vacation from the age of 18 to 30,” she says. – I know what it sounds like, but I always try to be honest with my patients and inform them reliably about the opportunities and risks associated with each method.
Zita West, a famous British midwife and founder of a fertility clinic, says that more and more young women dreaming of conceiving a child appear at her facility. “Recently I had a patient who called a feng shui specialist home and was told she couldn’t get pregnant because she was sleeping on the wrong side of the bed,” she says. – Of course, no one paid any attention to the fact that her husband spent half the year away from home for professional reasons.
Another patient regularly traveled to the Chilterns hills in southern England because it is said that this area is where fertility is stimulated. Yet another went to Austria to drink water from a certain waterfall. All these women fell into the same trap: they believed that they could not get pregnant naturally, that their bodies “punished” them for wanting a career.
Zita West also adds that modern people have become accustomed to the fact that if you want something, all you have to do is press a button. We live in a time of constant flood of information, and at the same time we are painfully unaware of how our own bodies function. “I know women who have been taking birth control pills for 15 years but have no idea about their natural cycle,” says West.
Moreover, we are increasingly excruciatingly impatient and want to see the results of our efforts immediately: actress Davinia Taylor recently admitted that she underwent IVF before attempting to become pregnant “naturally”. Unfortunately, the average woman is fertile only for a few days a month, so it always takes time to get pregnant …
“You can’t fool the biological clock,” says newscaster and journalist Kate Silverton, who recently had a baby at 41 after four failed IVF treatments. – Many people think that IVF is a method for everything. They have no idea how much it costs emotionally, physically, financially …
Susan Tollefsen gave birth to a baby girl, Freya, at the age of 2008, following IVF at a clinic in 57 – and became the UK’s oldest woman giving birth for the first time. Today she admits that she was too old to become a mother. Her partner, while supporting her when she became pregnant, eventually left her. “When I look at Freya, I am delighted, but I am also very sad because I am aware of the fact that time is passing faster and faster,” says Ms Tollefsen. – If I could change one thing, I would like to be younger, to be able to watch her grow up, get married, have children … It breaks my heart to think that I can die when she is very young.
Well – we may like it or not, but it is no coincidence that our fertility declines rapidly after the age of 35.