Media Blog

Talking Points for Media

Through these pages we attempt to point out national and international stories with relevance to reproductive medicine and infertility, which have been overlooked and/or misinterpreted by the media. The idea is as much to offer new information as to suggest the potential for good stories to the lay media.

  • CHR Blog: A woman's fertility crisisThe Wall Street Journal published an eloquent and highly personal account of one professional woman's failed attempts at IVF. Dr. Gleicher responds from the perspective of an infertility expert, who advises women daily on age-related fertility issues, and who, on some days, inevitably faces the sadness and disappointment of patients after IVF failures
  • CHR Blog: How we are ruining continuous medical educationIn a field that is dependent on life-long learning, a need for continuous medical education (CME) was recognized many decades ago, resulting in an evolving system, progressively moving from voluntary to mandatory accumulation of CME credits. Recent developments in the accreditation system of CME providers raise serious doubts as to whether quality CME can remain available to medical practitioners.
  • CHR Blog: What climate change and health care reform have in common?It is interesting to note the shift in tone about climate change. Gone is the certainty of impending global doom, originally probably best reflected in the exaggerations of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” the Nobel Price that followed and in the U.N.’s. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Climate sciences have, therefore, rightly developed a credibility gap with the public, which not only mimic the Obama administration’s when it comes to health care reform but, psychologically, actually appear to reinforce each other .
  • CHR Blog: Healthcare Reform or Social Reform?Here is ObamaCare again for a potentially last shot at glory, as President and Democrats struggle to pass legislation, – any legislation! If these efforts fail, ObamaCare, like previously ClintonCare, will be seen as one of history’s major legislative failures. Both would, however, differ significantly since the Clintons, for over a decade and a half, succeeded in simply removing the topic from further national consideration. Obama, no Clinton, faces different circumstances: Should Congress, indeed, defeat ObamaCare, health care reform, this time, will remain on the national agenda since the public strongly supports individual components of reform, if implemented incrementally.
  • CHR Blog: Unwinding the Biological ClockA recent article, written by Scottish colleagues, caused quite a stir in the media when they reported that by age 30, women carried only approximately 12% of their maximal prebirth follicle (egg) population in their ovaries (Hamish et al., PLoS ONE, 2/2/2010). What is most surprising about this article is, however, how surprised the media appear to be about these findings because they, of course, are anything but surprising.
  • CHR Blog: No longer only income redistributionWith many details still undetermined, proposals for national health care reform have now passed the House and are coming closer to passage in the Senate. Given the still unknown content of the over-2000-pages-long newly proposed legislation and its potential repercussions, we believe our specialty of reproductive endocrinology and infertility has a few lessons to teach, especially when it comes to the bleak possibility of healthcare redistribution.
  • CHR Blog: "Making Babies" the Eastern and Western WayOur New York colleague Sami S. David, MD has recently been making the rounds on the TV circuit, likely promoted by the P.R. machine of Little, Brown and Company, the publisher of his new book (with co-author Jill Blakeway). "Making Babies" is advertised as "promoting a proven 3-months program for achieving maximal fertility" and as "employing the very best practices of Eastern and Western medicine."
  • CHR Blog: Foreign Fertility PatientsCanadian investigators recently reported at the Annual ESHRE Meeting in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, that approximately 5,000 patients from abroad annually seek infertility treatments in the U.S. This is believed to reflect approximately 8% of the country’s annual treatment volume (Johnson K, OB.GYN. News, September 2009). Amongst those, a considerable percentage was Canadian, representing approximately 7% of the Canadian IVF volume.
  • CHR Blog: New Embryo Transfer GuidelinesAs OB. GYN. News (Johnson K, September 2009) also reports, ASRM is planning to publish, less than a year after publication of the last guidelines, an update on how many embryos should be transferred at various female ages and in different clinical conditions.
  • CHR Blog: British Researchers' Dubious Claim around PGSStill recall the disaster with so-called preimplantation genetic screening (PGS)? Remember how so-called “experts” pushed PGS as a (costly) addendum to standard in vitro fertilization (IVF) under the hypothesis that it would improve IVF pregnancy rates and reduce miscarriages after IVF?
    Still recall how CHR, starting in 2005, began arguing against the logic of the process? It simply did not make mathematical sense!
  • CHR Blog: International Egg TradeTwo Israeli physicians have been detained in Romania for allegedly trafficking in human oocytes. Given the high cost of oocyte donation in much of the developed world, it may come as no surprise that some physicians engage in such shady activities.
  • CHR Blog: Donor oocytes recipient dies 2 years after giving birth to twinsHere comes California again! Widely reported by practically all news media, a single woman, believed to be the oldest on record to have given birth via IVF-conceived offspring, suddenly died, Saturday, July 11, 2009, leaving behind 2-year old twins without a parent.
  • CHR Blog: PGS finally on front pageThe media have finally caught on to the preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGS) ruse that has been going on for much too long, as demonstrated by an excellent piece in the Wall Street Journal on July 1, 2009
  • CHR Blog: More misguided policiesUnfortunately, PGS is not the only IVF practice introduced with good intentions but negative patient results. The idea of introducing changes to established IVF practice patterns, based on theoretical concepts but without appropriate statistical support, has in recent years resulted in dramatic changes to routine IVF. Its most far-reaching consequence is probably the concept of single embryo transfer (s-ET).
  • CHR Blog: ESHRE 2009The Annual Meeting of ESHRE, this year in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, just commenced. Overall, it was, for lack of significant new developments, a rather disappointing meeting, though two highlights deserve mention.
  • CHR Blog: Recession has IVF clinics scramblingIt was left to the New York Post (Hillary Kramer, May, 24, 2009) to be the first media outlet to notice that IVF clinics are scrambling in battling the recession. Three principal reasons explain why infertility, after plastic surgery, is probably the most affected medical specialty area by this deep and lengthy recession.
  • CHR Blog: Reproductive CloningAfter octuplets in California and the ridiculous claim of being able to produce “designer babies” with predetermined hair and eye colors by another California-based colleague, now comes Dr. Panayiotis Zavos, who claims to have broken the ultimate taboo of having transferred cloned embryos into the human womb.” Thankfully, the media has downplayed the story.
  • CHR Blog: The Italian Infertility Law, Law 40 When the Italian legislature in 2004 passed one of the world’s most restrictive laws, governing infertility practices, Law 40, our Italian colleagues were shocked. Under the threat of criminal prosecution, Italian fertility specialists were forced, from one day to the next, to radically modify their practice patterns.
  • CHR Blog: What IVF can contribute to debate about socializing U.S. medicineIn vitro fertilization (IVF) recently celebrated the 30th anniversary of the first IVF birth and has resulted in the birth of over 3 million children world wide. Comparing IVF in the U. S. versus Europe reveals, however, a great deal about what we all can expect once the current U.S. health care system switches to a “European” model, as recently proposed by President Obama.
  • CHR Blog: The Impact of the EconomyThe economy is affecting infertility services, same as everywhere else. Numbers are down for new patients and new treatment cycles. However recent stories reporting that the recession is driving more young women to volunteer as egg donors overlooked a crucial point: At the same time that the number of egg donor volunteers is going up, the number of egg recipients -- those looking to use and thus provide remuneration for the service -- are down.
  • CHR Blog:The Bernard Madoff of InfertilityAfter Bernie Madoff’s billion dollar Ponzi scheme, stealing only a few millions almost appears like a let down. Not surprisingly, little media attention was, therefore, paid to a comparatively small crook, who, nevertheless, caused considerable havoc to the infertility field when he disappeared with somewhere between one to over three million dollars in escrow funds. The result is a nightmare of legal situations and uncertainties for the involved parties.
  • CHR Blog: Will we be able to produce new eggs?We all know that men and women are not mice, but much of what is learned in experiments on mice can often be applied to the human experience. It, therefore, is somewhat surprising how little media attention a recent paper in the April 12 issue of Nature Cell Biology attracted, in which Chinese investigators at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in a series of very well executed experiments presented convincing evidence which suggests that the ovary, like other body tissues, contains stem cells, which can be used to create new eggs.
  • CHR Blog: Research at CHRCHR’s research program has interesting new data and information available on the following topics, most of which is unknown by the general public:
    1. DHEA for "aged" ovariesCHR, which pioneered the utilization of DHEA in women with “older” ovaries, now has the first evidence that DHEA directly improves ovarian reserve.
    2. Improving ovarian assessmentCHR investigators have established a more accurate assessment of ovarian reserve using AMH rather than FSH. This measure arguably represents the single-most important paramenter of infertility evaluation.
    3. Predicting premature ovarian agingApproximately 10% of women are believed to prematurely age their ovaries. CHR investigators have developed a test which predicts who may be at risk towards this premature ovarian aging. As a result, at risk women can be monitored more closely and will have the flexibility to adjust reproductive planning and/or take steps to preserve fertility, such as egg or embryo cryopreservation.
    4. Fertility preservation for young cancer patientsCHR offers the largest fertility preservation program for young cancer patients in New York City, and possibly the country. As cancer survival is continuing to improve, fertility preservation for survivors of cancer is becoming an increasingly important topic. However often preserving fertility is an after thought of cancer treatment. This is changing and CHR is leading the way.

CHR Team

Norbert Gleicher, MD, Founder and Medical Director at the Center for Human Reproduction (CHR) – New York, President of the Foundation for Reproductive Medicine and Vis. Professor, Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences, Yale University School of Medicine is available to further discuss the here outlined subjects and other relevant topics in reproductive medicine.

David H. Barad, MD, MS, Clinical Director of CHR’s IVF and Menopause Programs and Clin. Assoc. Professor, Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Women’s Health, Albert Einstein College of Medicine is also available to comment on infertility issues.

Both Dr. Gleicher and Dr. Barad are nationally and internationally renowned investigators in the field of reproductive endocrinology and infertility. View their respective CVs.

Last updated: October 25, 2011