As increasingly more ladies flip to egg freezing, hoping to hit pause on their organic clocks and have kids after they’re older, some specialists warning in opposition to counting on the medical process.
Egg freezing is expensive and would not supply any ensures, stated Vardit Ravitsky, president of the Hastings Middle, a bioethics analysis institute. She understands why egg freezing sounds thrilling to younger ladies, however thinks it sends them the improper message.
“My worry, once I hear younger ladies say, ‘I froze the organic clock,’ is that they assume that is assured. They assume, ‘I put a child on ice, not my eggs, and I am simply going to go and thaw it once I’m able to turn out to be a mom,'” Ravitsky, who can be a senior lecturer at Harvard Medical College, stated. “It isn’t that. That is the issue.”
Egg freezing not a assured comfortable ending
Ravitsky factors to tales like Evelyn Gosnell’s. Gosnell froze her eggs 3 times at ages 32, 36 and 38, for a complete of 30 eggs, which is taken into account a really secure quantity. Gosnell was assured she would don’t have any issues. However issues began going improper when Gosnell and her now-fiance went to make use of her frozen eggs.
Solely 19 of her 30 eggs survived the thaw. Even worse, solely a type of 19 eggs, as soon as fertilized, grew to be an embryo. Anxiously hoping for constructive outcomes, Gosnell and her fiancé despatched just a few cells off for genetic testing to see if the embryo was viable.
Gosnell was at work when she received a message that her check outcomes had been in. The message requested her to verify if she needed to know the infant’s intercourse.
“I simply began to assume, ‘Oh, wow. They’ve requested me this, if I wish to know the intercourse. It means that there is a actual embryo there. It signifies that that is actual. It is regular. It is gonna be nice,'” Gosnell stated.
Then the report got here.
“And I open it. And it is irregular. And it was a lady.”
There was no probability the embryo might turn out to be a child.
Evelyn Gosnell
60 Minutes
And although uncommon, there have additionally been incidents the place a storage tank has malfunctioned and hundreds of eggs and embryos have been destroyed.
Dr. Fortunate Sekhon, a fertility specialist at RMA of New York, stated she explains to all her sufferers that freezing eggs can by no means be a assure. Simply as in naturally occurring pregnancies, there’s a drop off at each step alongside the best way. She calls it an inverted pyramid, explaining that ladies begin out with a sure variety of eggs, solely a few of which can fertilize, and solely a few of which can flip into genetically wholesome embryos, and solely a few of which can truly implant.
Ravitsky describes it as a raffle, with dangers even for girls who handle to get pregnant after freezing eggs.
“The older you might be, the riskier it’s to be pregnant,” she stated. “So you take a number of dangers. You are playing on a number of phases.”
The emphasis on earnings
Ladies are additionally playing with their cash, Ravitsky says. Egg freezing is pricey, with a single cycle costing upwards of $12,000. There’s additionally an added price of $500 to $1,000 annually to retailer the eggs, and a $10,000 invoice to thaw and fertilize the eggs.
“You take the monetary price, you take the medical price for what? For a raffle,” Ravitsky stated.
Whereas growing numbers of huge corporations are providing egg freezing as a lined profit for his or her workers, it is not the case at most corporations.
Vardit Ravitsky
60 Minutes
“Nearly all of ladies who freeze their eggs electively are White and well-resourced,” Ravitsky stated. “And there is a vital hole in your choices and your reproductive autonomy in case you have sources or you do not.”
There’s additionally been criticism of corporations that do supply egg freezing as a profit, with critics accusing them of protecting egg freezing prices to not assist ladies, however to maintain feminine workers at their desks.
Regardless of the criticism from some, enterprise is booming within the area of fertility. Enterprise capital and personal fairness corporations have backed egg freezing start-ups, and have purchased up and invested in present non-public and educational fertility clinics to consolidate them into large networks.
Firms goal ladies with catchy adverts on social media and host enjoyable occasions to offer ladies data and draw them in.
Dr. Marcelle Cedars, a fertility specialist with the College of California San Francisco, and a previous president of the American Society for Reproductive Drugs, says getting ladies data is nice, however she worries that the emphasis on earnings she is seeing in non-public equity-backed fertility corporations is creating warped incentives.
Requested whether or not she’s heard of docs being pressured to encourage extra cycles to generate extra income, Cedars stated, “That’s undoubtedly occurring in some corporations. How rapidly do you get somebody? What number of cycles do you get per affected person? That is how income relies. That is how cost and compensation relies. And so that is what the motivation turns into.”
“I’ve at all times bristled once I hear my specialty known as an trade. And I feel prior to now it wasn’t,” Cedars stated. “However I do assume it’s turning into that.”
So ought to ladies freeze their eggs?
Ravitsky believes society pushes high-achieving ladies to get a lot completed earlier than they’ve kids, that they run out of time. She believes it could be higher if they might turn out to be moms youthful.
“The optimum time to have a child, from a organic/medical perspective is in your 20s or early 30s. However the socially optimum time is later than that,” Ravitsky stated. “I feel we’re telling ladies, ‘Oh, in your 20s focus in your schooling, your profession, discovering a associate, having monetary stability, relationship stability, in order that once you do have a child you is usually a accountable mom.'”
She argues a greater resolution can be for corporations to have insurance policies like paid parental depart, versatile hours and baby care on the office to make it simpler for girls to have infants youthful.
However ladies 60 Minutes spoke with stated they weren’t able to have kids youthful. They stated they understood egg freezing wasn’t a certainty, however that it was the precise transfer for them.
Whereas egg freezing did not work out for Gosnell, the girl whose 30 frozen eggs did not produce a child, her story does have a cheerful ending. After many extra rounds of egg retrieval and IVF, she and her fiance welcomed a child woman in December.
Lesley Stahl
