misconceptions about ivf

In the spirit of my blog's title, (Mis)conceptions, I want to discuss a few skewed public perceptions about IVF.

What provoked this diatribe, you might ask? The TV show called The View. I have it on in the background while I'm working on my thesis, partly because I like Whoopi Goldberg, partly because I think Joy is funny, and partly because I love to hate Elisabeth Hasselbeck.

First, Elisabeth pissed me off today because she announced her pregnancy. That set the stage. Especially when she commented later on how difficult it was for her to achieve pregnancy. Riiiight. She has said before that that's because her two other kids won't allow her to have enough 'alone time' with her husband. Boo hoo.

Then the women brought up the octuplets case in the U.S. I turned the sound up because I wanted to know how they were going to talk about infertility treatments. I thought: Of course IVF will get blamed for the 8 babies, since the public does not understand the difference between IUI and IVF, so the two are conflated. And then IVF becomes blamed for everything, including high-order multiples, when in fact injects/IUI are far more likely the cause.

First, Whoopi made the comment about the number of "eggs" that are "implanted" during IVF. Yo, Whoopi: Substitute "embryos" and "transferred," respectively. We infertile women HOPE for implantation after that.

I thought that Sherri Shephard (sp?) would correct Whoopi's terminology, since she's actually been through IVF. But no. Although I seem to recall that Sherri set everyone straight on how few embies are supposed to be transferred for IVF (except for exceptional situations), she talked about "implanted eggs," too. And then she commented on how Clomid is to blame for HOM (high-order multiples)! Not ONE mention of injectables/IUI!!!

Great. So now the viewing public will continue to believe that the only existing reproductive technologies are Clomid (through which all success stories will consist of HOM) and IVF (in which "eggs" are "implanted" in the woman's uterus).

And then Elisabeth, displaying a shocking lack of geographical knowledge, made a sweeping announcement that in Europe, only 1 embie is allowed per transfer. Ok, first of all, Europe is not a single country, honey. Second, the one-embryo rule is only true in SOME European countries, from what I understand. I think Germany only allows one, but I could be wrong on that. And I'm pretty sure the Czech Republic allows more than 1, but again, I could be incorrect.

Anyway, my point is that she should NOT be talking about things she doesn't know firsthand. She makes it sound as though she's had serious fertility problems, when in fact she has NOT, as evidenced by this third 'surprise' pregnancy. She doesn't know anything about ART, but pretends she does. And though she's not the only person to pretend like this - everyone's got opinions on ART, whether or not they've experienced infertility - she has no business propagating her incorrect views on television, thereby misinforming the public. Which makes things even harder for the infertile women and men who are going through treatments, and hoping and praying and crying for the best possible outcome.

(Should I send this post to The View?)