#infertility care

[psicheanima]

OCs. Theyre in an arranged marriage.

[dismas-n-dismay]

Now if I said we should all make Farcille fankids

And then make them all siblings

And THEN draw the ensuing chaos, who would stop me? Who would stop us? Rise.

[pastexistence]

need the michaela stirling haters to be silenced i cannot emphasise enough how much i DON'T care about your book boyfriend 😭

[reasonsforhope]

"Scientists have created mice with two biological fathers by generating eggs from male cells, a development that opens up radical new possibilities for reproduction.

The advance could ultimately pave the way for treatments for severe forms of infertility, as well as raising the tantalising prospect of same-sex couples being able to have a biological child together in the future.

“This is the first case of making robust mammal oocytes [a.k.a. egg cells] from male cells,” said Katsuhiko Hayashi, who led the work at Kyushu University in Japan and is internationally renowned as a pioneer in the field of lab-grown eggs and sperm.

Hayashi, who presented the development at the Third International Summit on Human Genome Editing at the Francis Crick Institute in London on Wednesday, predicts that it will be technically possible to create a viable human egg from a male skin cell within a decade. Others suggested this timeline was optimistic given that scientists are yet to create viable lab-grown human eggs from female cells.

Previously scientists have created mice that technically had two biological fathers through a chain of elaborate steps, including genetic engineering. However, this is the first time viable eggs have been cultivated from male cells and marks a significant advance. Hayashi’s team is now attempting to replicate this achievement with human cells, although there would be significant hurdles for the use of lab-grown eggs for clinical purposes, including establishing their safety.

“Purely in terms of technology, it will be possible [in humans] even in 10 years,” he said, adding that he personally would be in favour of the technology being used clinically to allow two men to have a baby if it were shown to be safe.

“I don’t know whether they’ll be available for reproduction,” he said. “That is not a question just for the scientific programme, but also for [society].”

The technique could also be applied to treat severe forms of infertility, including women with Turner’s syndrome, in whom one copy of the X chromosome is missing or partly missing, and Hayashi said this application was the primary motivation for the research.

Others suggested that it could prove challenging to translate the technique to human cells. Human cells require much longer periods of cultivation to produce a mature egg, which can increase the risk of cells acquiring unwanted genetic changes.

Prof George Daley, the dean of Harvard Medical School, described the work as “fascinating”, but added that other research had indicated that creating lab-grown gametes from human cells was more challenging than for mouse cells. “We still don’t understand enough of the unique biology of human gametogenesis to reproduce Hayashi’s provocative work in mice,” he said.

Study Methods

The study, which has been submitted for publication in a leading journal, relied on a sequence of intricate steps to transform a skin cell, carrying the male XY chromosome combination, into an egg, with the female XX version.

Male skin cells were reprogrammed into a stem cell-like state to create so-called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. The Y-chromosome of these cells was then deleted and replaced by an X chromosome “borrowed” from another cell to produce iPS cells with two identical X chromosomes.

“The trick of this, the biggest trick, is the duplication of the X chromosome,” said Hayashi. “We really tried to establish a system to duplicate the X chromosome.”

Finally, the cells were cultivated in an ovary organoid, a culture system designed to replicate the conditions inside a mouse ovary. When the eggs were fertilised with normal sperm, the scientists obtained about 600 embryos, which were implanted into surrogate mice, resulting in the birth of seven mouse pups. The efficiency of about 1% was lower [although not THAT much lower] than the efficiency achieved with normal female-derived eggs, where about 5% of embryos went on to produce a live birth.

The baby mice appeared healthy, had a normal lifespan, and went on to have offspring as adults. “They look OK, they look to be growing normally, they become fathers,” said Hayashi.

Going Further

He and colleagues are now attempting to replicate the creation of lab-grown eggs using human cells.

Prof Amander Clark, who works on lab-grown gametes at the University of California Los Angeles, said that translating the work into human cells would be a “huge leap”, because scientists are yet to create lab-grown human eggs from female cells.

Scientists have created the precursors of human eggs, but until now the cells have stopped developing before the point of meiosis, a critical step of cell division that is required in the development of mature eggs and sperm. “We’re poised at this bottleneck at the moment,” she said. “The next steps are an engineering challenge. But getting through that could be 10 years or 20 years.”

-via The Guardian (US), 3/8/23

[habibialkaysani]

welp. I read 'when he was wicked' aka the franchael book in the bridgerton series... and I have Thoughts. mostly julia quinn writes men truly horribly. literally the saving grace of anthony bridgerton is the actor who plays him. in all the books I've read of quinn's, the guy protagonist shakes the woman he loves by her shoulders or disrespects her massively and is literally described as 'predatory' in the run up to the sex scene!!!! like. I really liked michael up until a point. I never really liked anthony in 'the viscount who loved me' and colin was only marginally more tolerable in 'romancing mr bridgerton'. but michael seemed genuinely charming and a good guy who had a solid reason why he didn't tell frannie about his feelings for her. so it's a real shame that he turns into a bit of a monster when he seduces frannie and basically tries to entrap her into marriage - idk what it is about julia quinn that she just seems allergic to writing decent male characters???

it does make me glad that they genderbent michael for frannie's season in the show. and I can see how they could work the whole infertility plot in too with michaela and frannie - say if frannie gets pregnant and doesn't know it immediately, finds out soon after john dies, and it turns out michaela is also pregnant but by accident (she's still a rake which I think would be interesting as a concept to explore in a female character). frannie miscarries as per the book and michaela has a lot of fears about being a mother - and at the same time there's all this talk about who the earldom will go to next now john is gone. so they somehow pass michaela's child off as frannie's, the earldom doesn't go to the awful debenham side of the family and this whole ordeal brings frannie and michaela closer and they learn to take care of each other while both still mourning, and they both feel like it would be a betrayal of john and likely frannie is in denial about her queerness... all I'm saying, bridgerton writers room, I'm available...

[growinginsideshrinkingoutside]

Abortion

After many years of trying to have a baby, our first pregnancy ended with an abortion. I think it’s important to take the time to address the reality of the situation.

Trigger Warning; Abortion/Miscarriage/Loss. Previous: Embryo Transfer #1 Throughout my entire childhood, I always knew that my mom had trouble getting pregnant and ended up going through 5 miscarriages before I was born. I listened to her talk about it, and I knew that she had names chosen out for each one of the siblings that I never had. I never quite knew how to feel for her. I never…

[cadere-art]

Sébastie Jayde is the foundator of Pigeon Aéropostale, an upstart entreprise trying to establish the first postal airlines.

Sébastie is the mixed-race, illegitimate daughter of the pulp and paper baron Josse Quesqueraux, born of his affair with Adénie Jayde, his secretary. When it became obvious that Adénie was pregnant, Josse, unwilling to end the affair, moved her to the office of one of his mills in Urterre, where Sébastie was born. By Iscean law, when the genitor of the child can be found the putative father of an illegitimate child must provide support for that child. Initially, Josse did only that which he must do, but as Sébastie grew and Josse got to know her on his visite to Urterre, he became increasingly attached to his natural child. Eventually, he had Adénie and Sébastie moved back to Saint-Loegaire, where he enlisted Sébastie in the kind of private school where nobles and bourgeois who are not very rich send their children, and very rich ones send their bastards.

Sébastie grew with the benefits of a full education and her father's name as a boon and a burden, never fully part of the society in which she moved. As she grew older, she became increasingly interested in machinery: the great static ones like the ones at the mill where she grew up, but moreso the moving ones: the steamboats, the trains, these new motorized carts... The first time Sébastie saw a airplane, an ugly lumbering prototype at a technology fair to which her father had brought her, was a revelation of almost divine proportions.

With Judoc's financial support, Sébastie founded a workshop where she began to build her own stuttering, lumbering flying machines, amassing expertise and experience where she could find it. She would eventually earn her name when she became the first pilot to fly an aircraft across the straight seperating Iscea and Urterre. For her, this was the beginning of aeronautics as more than a hobby, and soon after, Pigeon Aéropostale was born.

[positively-emerald]

From now on this blog will refer to surrogacy parents as womb traffickers and if that’s going to be an issue you may as well unfollow me right now

[coochiequeens]

No one is entitled to biological offspring and how can they include surrogacy in the Act without implying that couples are entitled to women to be surrogates?

A trio of Democratic senators are introducing a "Right to IVF Act" that would, among other things, force private health insurance plans to cover assisted reproduction treatments such as in vitro fertilization (IVF), egg freezing, and gestational surrogacy.

The measure provides no exception or accommodations for religious objections, all but ensuring massive legal battles over the mandate should it pass.

The "sweeping legislative package" (as the senators describe it) combines several existing pieces of legislation, including the Access to Family Building Act and the Family Building Federal Employees Health Benefit Fairness Act sponsored by Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D–Ill.), the Veteran Families Health Services Act from Sen. Patty Murray (D–Wash.), and the Access to Infertility Treatment and Care Act from Sen. Cory Booker (D–N.J.).

Booker's contribution here is probably the most controversial. It requires coverage for assisted reproduction from any health care plan that covers obstetric services.

A Reverse Contraception Mandate

Remember the Affordable Care Act's contraception mandate, which required private health insurance plans to cover birth control (allegedly) at no cost to plan participants? It spawned some big legal battles over the rights of religious employers and institutions not to offer staff health plans that included birth control coverage.

Booker's Access to Infertility Treatment and Care Act is a lot like the Obamacare contraception mandate, except instead of requiring health care plans to cover the costs of avoiding pregnancy it would require them to cover treatments to help people become pregnant.

The bill states that all group health plans or health insurance issuers offering group or individual health insurance must cover assisted reproduction and fertility preservation treatments if they cover any obstetric services. It defines assisted reproductive technology as "treatments or procedures that involve the handling of human egg, sperm, and embryo outside of the body with the intent of facilitating a pregnancy, including in vitro fertilization, egg, embryo, or sperm cryopreservation, egg or embryo donation, and gestational surrogacy."

Health insurance plans could only require participant cost-sharing (in the form of co-pays, deductibles, etc.) for such services to the same extent that they require cost-sharing for similar services.

What Could Go Wrong?

It seems like it should go without saying by now but there is no such thing as government-mandated healthcare savings. Authorities can order health care plans to cover IVF (or contraception or whatever) and cap point-of-service costs for plan participants, but health insurers will inevitably pass these costs on to consumers in other ways—leading to higher insurance premiums overall or other health care cost increases.

Yes, IVF and other fertility procedures are expensive. But a mandate like this could actually risk raising IVF costs.

When a lot of people are paying out of pocket for fertility treatments, medical professionals have an incentive to keep costs affordable in order to attract patients. If everyone's insurance covers IVF and patients needn't bother with comparing costs or weighing costs versus benefits, there's nothing to stop medical providers from raising prices greatly. We'll see the same cost inflation we've seen in other sectors of the U.S. healthcare marketplace—a situation that not only balloons health care spending generally (and gets passed on to consumers one way or another) but makes fertility treatments out of reach for people who don't have insurance that covers such treatments.

Raising costs isn't the only issue here, of course. There's the matter of more government intervention in private markets (something some of us are still wild-eyed enough to oppose!).

Offering employee health care plans that cover IVF could be a good selling point for recruiting potential employees or keeping existing employees happy. But there's no reason that every employer should have to do so, just because lawmakers want IVF to be more accessible.

It's unfair to employers—big or small, religious or non-religious—to say they all must take on the costs of offering health care plans that cover pricey fertility treatments. And Booker's bill contains no exceptions for small businesses or for entities with religious or ethical objections.

A lot of religious people are morally opposed to things like IVF and surrogacy. This measure would force religious employers to subsidize and tacitly condone these things if they wanted to offer employees health care plans with any obstetrics coverage at all.

As with any government intervention in free markets, there's the possibility that this fertility treatment mandate would distort incentives. IVF can certainly be an invaluable tool for folks experiencing infertility. But it's also very expensive and very taxing—emotionally and physically—for the women undergoing it, with far from universal success rates. The new mandate could encourage people who may not be good candidates for IVF to keep trying it, perhaps nudging them away from other options (like adoption) that might be better suited to their circumstances.

'Access' Vs. Whatever This Is

Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, many Americans have worried that the legal regime change would pave the way for outlawing things like contraception or IVF, too. Encoding into law (or legal precedent) the idea that fertilized eggs are people could have negative implications for these things, even if many conservative politicians pledge (and demonstrate) that IVF and birth control are safe. In response, some progressive politicians—perhaps genuinely concerned, perhaps sensing political opportunity (or why not both?)—have started talking a lot about the need to protect access to IVF across the country.

As much as I agree with this goal, I think IVF's legality is better off as a state-by-state matter. That said, the "protect IVF nationwide" impulse wouldn't be so bad if "protecting access" simply meant making sure that the procedure was legal.

But as we've seen again and again over the past couple decades, Democrats tend to define health care and medicine "access" differently.

The new Right to IVF Act would establish a national right to provide or receive assisted reproduction services. In their press release, the senators say this last bit would "pre-empt any state effort to limit such access and ensur[e] no hopeful parent—or their doctors—are punished for trying to start or grow a family." OK.

But that's not all it would do. The bill's text states that "an individual has a statutory right under this Act, including without prohibition or unreasonable limitation or interference (such as due to financial cost or detriment to the individual's health, including mental health), to—(A) access assisted reproductive technology; (B) continue or complete an ongoing assisted reproductive technology treatment or procedure pursuant to a written plan or agreement with a health care provider; and (C) retain all rights regarding the use or disposition of reproductive genetic materials, including gametes."

Note that bit about financial cost. It's kind of confusingly worded and it's unclear exactly what that would mean in practice. But it could give the government leeway to directly intervene if they think IVF is broadly unaffordable or to place more demands on individual health care facilities, providers, insurance plans, etc., to help cover the costs of IVF for people whom it would otherwise be financially out of reach.

This is the distilled essence of how Democrats go too far on issues like this. They're not content to say "People shouldn't be punished for utilizing/offering IVF" or that the practice shouldn't be illegal. They look at authoritarian or overreaching possibilities from the other side (like banning or criminalizing IVF) and respond with overreaching proposals of their own.

The proble with increasing access to IVF is what happens when the couple needs a surrogate to have biological offspring? Will they beg and pester the women in their lives? Will the affordable IVF compensate surrogates fairly?

[slavabogu]

my night routine is making me want to kms its like. shower and exfoliate. face massage. face skincare products. brush teeth. brush teeth again (intradental). qtips for ears. moisturise entire body as i desperately try and fail to contain body acne and eczema at the same time. corticosteroid cream. acne patches. rewrap the blister on my foot. brush hair. braid hair. deodorant(s). im losing it. all im doing is just working and trying to keep myself presentable and its somehow impossibly hard.

[like-sands-of-time]

So apparently it was a money/politics issue, and Lisa edelstein chose to leave the show for a few reasons I've read.. either the people in charge of the show decided to give more funding to Olivia Wilde over her, despite her significance in the show and seniority on the staff, or they disagreed with her political decisions outside of the show and she chose to leave.

Either way it's clear after six years of build up, and apparently twenty years of the characters having history, chemistry, genuine attraction to each other, that the relationship was boring and House being a moody self destructive addict was better for views (I roll my eyes here)

So House, the addict if you recall, was able to tell Stacy she should be with her husband after he slept with her, after he genuinely tried to win her back, because her husband begged him and he realized that they still had a future.

Then a few years later House, the addict who's been reformed and has since been going to therapy and working on himself for two years, is able to see Cuddy with another man and accepts it, offers his blessing, gives her a housewarming gift.

Then Cuddy once again tells him he's alone, always has been, always will be. Just like Wilson has done. It's hurtful, it sucks, but he's heard it before. And he's thought it before. He's not even outwardly emotional about it. He confesses to the dying woman that he is in fact alone and it's not worth it, pride and vanity to have his leg in tact wasn't worth losing his heart.

She decides to call off her relationship that we have to assume she's been hesitant on the whole time, given even Lucas has mentioned it, all because she has to give 'this', their relationship, a shot. Ok. So... Now what?

Back from the edge of using once more, he's struggling but managing. He knows she's gonna leave him one way or another but she's sure she won't, and despite every warning bell he's trying not to self sabotage. He respects her opinion at work more, genuinely, and he preps Rachel for preschool, forming an actual bond with her over cartoons and toys.

He gets drunk and confesses to Cuddy that him listening to her, him being more cautious and overthinking himself is making him a worse diagnostician, and that logically he should break up with her. But that he'd rather find the happiness that comes with their relationship, than the stress and inevitable pain that comes with losing patients. She seems to take this as drunken ramblings and we see nothing more on the subject, until her surgery.

She breaks up with him because he relapses. She got together with him because he was going to relapse. Is it irony? Is it fate? Is it a dumbass character move that someone who's loved another for years and knows how much he struggles with the genuine physical pain would do? You're telling me after perjuring herself just a few years earlier she's not willing to handle a relapse he had at the very real fear she was dying? He didn't hurt her, or Rachel, he took the pill for the pain both physical and emotional he was in. How does that seem unlike House? All that means is just how much he cared about her and couldn't handle losing her, like millions of other people in the world.

Maybe she wants to take a step back, maybe she insists that he go to a rehab facility for 30 days, but breaking up...? "He's never going to be there for me?" That doesn't quite make sense. You've never wanted that before? You've never needed that before? So this is different, this is extreme, and cuddy is scared too. But how she doesn't accept his actions doesn't make any sense for her character. Even if her enabling him is morally wrong or anything else, it was very uncharacteristic for her to break up with him knowing how he'd take it. Knowing how she'd take it.

Then to have Cuddy spend the next several episodes trying to poke it him, force him to talk to her? Why not his therapist? That doesn't make sense

It's writing laziness and I started season eight anyway because I know I hate leaving things unfinished but honestly I just don't feel it. I don't feel the emotional connection to the show, to the new characters in it, I just don't care. Because it doesn't matter right? We're not gonna see either Lisa again and she was fundamental to both the show and the character.

Seeing the spoilers that I have for the end of the show no longer push me to see what happens leading up to it, they honestly just disappoint me. Cancer is a weak and doubly ironic way to end things for an oncologist, but I just don't even care anymore.

His years of friendships and eventual self help are worthless within half a season. It's amazing really.

[raeathnos]

.

[ivfsunflower]

Comprehensive Care from Infertility to Pediatrics

Sunflower IVF and Infertility Center provides comprehensive treatment and care for your entire pregnancy journey from getting admitted for the infertility treatment to the post delivery maternal and child care. Being the leading IVF Center in India, we are here caring for you at all the stages of pregnancy to paediatrics. 

[milimeters-morales]

ACAU Peter: at this point i’m about to start eating people who argue with me

ACAU Matt: 😨 ???

ACAU Peter: you’re only 7th on the list don’t worry

[eebie]

im getting an ultrasound