4.5.3.6 - The use of hormones to treat infertility

Fertility drugs?

Conatin LH and FSH

Given to women to stimulate ovulation and can help the women get pregnant

Advantages of fertility drugs?

• helps the women get pregnant

Disadvanatges of fertility drugs?

• success rates are not high

• Too many eggs stimulate = resulting in multiple births = risk to both babies and the mother

• Very emotionally and physically stressful

• Can become expensive

Describe IVF

• IVF involves giving a mother FSH and LH to stimulate the maturation of several eggs

• Eggs are collected from the mother’s ovaries and fertilised by sperm from the farther in the laboratory

• (Can also involve the use of ICSI - intra-cytoplasmatic sperm injection - where the sperm is ij=njected directly into an egg)

• The fertilised eggs develop into embryos

• At the stage when the embryo is a tiny ball of cells, one or two are inserted into the mother’s uterus (womb )

pros?

• can give an infertile couple a child

cons?

• multiple births

• Success rate is low

• Emotionally and physically stressful for mother

What has helped improve the success rate if IVF

Advancements in microscope techniques have helped to improve the techniques - and therefore the success rate - of IVF

Give examples of these improvements.

Such as specialised micro-tools have been developed to use on the eggs and sperm under the microscope

Also used to remove single cells from the embryo for genetic testing

Development of time-lapse imaging = growth of the embryo is continuously monitored

Why are some people against IVF?

• process of IVF often results in unused embryos that are eventually destroyed

• So some people argue this is unethical because each embryo is a potential human life

• Genetic testing of embryos before implantation can also raise ethical issues - as some people believe it can leads to there selection of preferred characteristics such as gender or eye colour