The saying is that time heals all wounds.  In the area of  Assisted Reproduction, time has demonstrated that the expert predictions in the late 70's were way off base and thankfully the inaccurate statements made at that time have diminished.

In 1978, most insurance companies decided not to cover IVF because it was "too expensive or frivolous, and critics thought that would halt the practice altogether," Gregory Pence, professor of bioethics at University of Alabama-Birmingham's School of Medicine, writes in a Los Angeles Times.  "Early on, critics doubted that couples would pay for IVF, especially if their chances of creating a baby were low." However, the last 30 years have "proved the critics very wrong," Pence writes, adding, "Fortunately, couples enjoy the freedom to spend their money as they choose to buy reproductive help." Few states require insurance coverage of IVF, with costs running about $8,000 for each attempt, and new tools, such as using eggs of young women, have boosted success rates, especially for women over age 40.  According to 2005 CDC data, assisted reproduction helped to create more than 50,000 U.S. infants in that year alone, Pence writes (Pence, Los Angeles Times, 7/24).

Can you imagine, "frivolous"?  I can only imagine the cigar puffing misogynist that made that comment.

For years there has been a mixed reaction to why young women help infertile persons by acting as their gestational carrier.  I have personally heard from carriers, intended parents, physicians, agency owners and cynics and with a myriad of reasons including:

She is an "angel"; to being a "mercenary"; and that she "understands our pain".  As cynical or grateful your reaction may be, it remains that there are many more infertile persons looking for gestatational carriers than carriers themselves.

On July, 7 this year the 24th annual European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology opened.  One researcher from Middlesex University in London presented a paper demonstrating that the factors that induce women to become surrogates differed between groups, as did reasons for wanting to become parents themselves.

Women who were willing to become surrogates were more likely to help others to become parents like themselves.  The author concluded that potential surrogates value families and parenthood over extraneous ideas like compensation.  

Now that is totally cool! 

I do a fair amount of single parent surrogacies.  The stories behind the surrogacy range from persons who never got married, to persons who never wanted to be married, or simply to persons who put their career before a family.  

One successful physician I helped even joked, "I want children outside of marriage so I never have to address the issue of child support." 

Regardless of their individual motivation, each single parent I represent concludes that they can have a child even if alone and despite the fact that they will need the support of a gestational carrier.

We can all say that guiding a surrogacy through the medical and legal systems requires experience on the part of the agency, clinic and legal practitioners.  We must remember though, things that are taken for granted when representing couples, as for example guardianships, have to be specifically addressed when representing singles.

You might want to read this article. http://www.proudparenting.com/node/1893  I enjoy any story with a happy ending.

From the "Duh, why did you spend all of the research dollars on that study" department, we hear that the use it or lose it proponents are at it again. 

Researchers from the University of Tampere in Finland report in the American Journal of Medicine that men who had sex less than once per week were twice as likely to develop ED over the next five years as men who had sex at least once a week. 

We also hear this week that watermelon has certain chemicals which mimic Viagra.  At least that is what the researchers at Texas A&M would like you to believe.

Of course, the obvious joke here is having the University of Tampere establish an exchange student program with Texas A&M.

This is from the just when you heard everything news center:

Hospital workers in Britain were left stunned after a couple reportedly abandoned IVF twin girls immediately after giving birth because they weren't boys.  The couple of Indian heritage but who live as British citizens in the city of Birmingham told medical staff directly after the Caesarean section delivery they weren't going to accept the girls as they were the "wrong sex", UK tabloid The Sun reported.

The couple had undergone IVF treatment in India because with the mother aged 59 and the father a  72-year-old they  were deemed too old to undergo the procedure in Britain.

Female babies are often abandoned and sometimes left for dead or killed in India by traditional families who only value male offspring.

I am sure that you are as disjointed as I about this turn of events.  My normal experience is to see Intended Parents estatic to have children regardless of gender or physical health.  Here we have a medical series of events initiated and then rejected by the Couple merely because of gender.  

We must remember that the UK medical system is available to all persons and that the out of pocket cost is minimal.  In light of these facts, it smacks of a present ability to abuse resources.  Thus, there is an obvious problem with the medical system to properly screen prospective Intended Parents. 

We hear that the government is investigating?  Big deal.  Placing the Intended Parents names on the birth certificate requires a best interest of the child standard.  Would it ever be in the best interest of the girls to be forced into the arms of Parents who view them as defective?