Doctor sued as wrong sperm alleged in fertility cases

Lawyers for two families suing a well-known Ottawa fertility doctor for allegedly using the wrong sperm samples to create their children say they believe other patients of the clinic may be in for a surprise.

Dr. Bernard Norman Barwin and the Broadview Fertility Clinic, which he owns, are the targets of two lawsuits launched in Ontario Superior Court seeking a combined $3-million in damages for “heightened anxiety, depression and frustration,” among other things, suffered by the families.

Both statements of claim, obtained by the National Post, ask the court to order a test of Dr. Barwin to rule out “the possibility that he is the donor whose sperm was used to inseminate.”

Pam MacEachern, lawyer for the two families, said she is investigating the possibility that her clients aren’t the only parents who may have been inseminated with the wrong sperm, given the proximity in time, 2005 and 2007, between the alleged incidents.

“The fact that it happened to two people a couple of years apart in very similar circumstances gives us a lot of concern,” Ms. MacEachern said yesterday. “We believe that there’s a good basis to believe that it probably has happened to other people.”

Dr. Barwin, who came to Ottawa in 1973 and set up his private fertility clinic in the mid-1980s, denies the allegations, stating in a statement of defence that “all medical care and treatments provided were carried out in a careful, competent and diligent manner and in accordance with the applicable standard of care.”

For more on this story follow the link: http://www.nationalpost.com/m/story.html?id=3525349

Quick-frozen sperm could offer thousands of childless men the chance of fatherhood

A new technique for preserving sperm could offer men with low sperm counts, cancer, or viruses such as HIV the hope of fathering healthy children.

Experts found that fast-freezing sperm preserves its ability to swim towards an egg far more efficiently than the slow-freezing method currently in use.

The study, from experts in Chile and Germany, will be presented at the World Congress of Fertility and Sterility in Munich.

Current slow-freezing techniques mean the sperm only retains 30 to 40 per cent of activity. But rapid freezing - also known as vitrification - allows that figure to rise to almost 80 per cent.

Vitrification is already used to quick-freeze eggs and embryos with success, allowing spare ones to be used in IVF at a later date.

Following thawing, more eggs and embryos survive with vitrification than with older, slower cooling techniques.

In vitrification, cryopreservation agents are added to lower the water content in cells and prevent ice crystals building up.

In the latest study, plasma was separated and removed and the sperm placed in a sucrose solution before being plunged into liquid nitrogen to fast-freeze.

Current slow-freezing techniques mean the sperm only retains 30 to 40 per cent of activity. But rapid freezing - also known as vitrification - allows that figure to rise to almost 80 per cent.

Vitrification is already used to quick-freeze eggs and embryos with success, allowing spare ones to be used in IVF at a later date.

Following thawing, more eggs and embryos survive with vitrification than with older, slower cooling techniques.

In vitrification, cryopreservation agents are added to lower the water content in cells and prevent ice crystals building up.

In the latest study, plasma was separated and removed and the sperm placed in a sucrose solution before being plunged into liquid nitrogen to fast-freeze.

Current slow-freezing techniques mean the sperm only retains 30 to 40 per cent of activity. But rapid freezing - also known as vitrification - allows that figure to rise to almost 80 per cent.

Vitrification is already used to quick-freeze eggs and embryos with success, allowing spare ones to be used in IVF at a later date.

Following thawing, more eggs and embryos survive with vitrification than with older, slower cooling techniques.

In vitrification, cryopreservation agents are added to lower the water content in cells and prevent ice crystals building up.

In the latest study, plasma was separated and removed and the sperm placed in a sucrose solution before being plunged into liquid nitrogen to fast freeze.

For more on this story follow the link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1311532/Fast-freezing-sperm-offer-thousands-childless-men-chance-fatherhood.html#ixzz0zUzrbtAY

IVF babies in health alert: Test-tube children 30 per cent more likely to have defects, warns watchdog

Couples having IVF treatment are to be warned for the first time that their children have a higher risk of genetic flaws and health problems.
Official guidance will make clear that test-tube babies could be up to 30 per cent more likely to suffer from certain birth defects.
The alert has been ordered by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, the Government's watchdog on fertility issues.

It means that the one in six British couples estimated to be infertile will have to balance their desire for a child against concerns that IVF methods could lead to life-threatening defects or long-term disabilities.
A number of studies have already raised concerns over the growing use of the procedure, which accounts for more than 10,000 births in Britain every year.

Research published online last month in the Human Reproduction journal found that IVF babies suffer from higher rates of birth defects than those conceived naturally.

The scientists from the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta looked at more than 13,500 births and a further 5,000 control cases using data from the National Birth Defects Prevention Study.

Shake-up of NHS 'incentives' in drive to curb caesareans

Plans to reduce the number of caesarean deliveries and give women greater access to home births are being considered by ministers.

They want to remove incentives that see hospitals paid extra for surgical births, with or without complications.

The payments mean that one in four babies is delivered by caesarean section - almost double the World Health Organisation's recommended rate.

At around 155,000 babies last year, the figure is three times that of 1980 and one that flies in the face of efforts by the last government to encourage natural births.

Ministers say they do not want to 'demonise' C-sections or discourage doctors from performing them when clinically necessary.


For more on this story follow the link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1308846/Shake-NHS-incentives-drive-curb-caesareans.html?ito=feeds-newsxml#ixzz0ykn3rk8q

Pregnant rock singer to stage special concert for mums-to-be in Edinburgh

IT WILL surely be the mother of all rock gigs. A pregnant rock singer is set to stage a concert specifically aimed at mums-to-be.

The event, dubbed Wombstock, is to be held in Edinburgh later in the year with the aim of using music to help stimulate the unborn kids as well as allowing their mums to let their hair down.

Singer Gulzhan Ibraveya is leading from the front as she will be well on the way to the delivery ward herself when she hosts the gig on November 2

The 32-year-old Kazakh, who formed Universal You with husband Paul Finnie, 42, and Mark Grant, 24, in the Capital two years ago, will be at the mic at the city's Voodoo Rooms just weeks from her due date.

The band, who recently played a sell-out gig to 12,000 fans in Kazakhstan, hope that hundreds of mums-to-be and their partners will flock to the concert and are even considering having medics on site in case any of the fans go into labour.

For more on this story follow the link: http://news.scotsman.com/scotland/Pregnant-rock-singer-to-stage.6514625.jp

Couples face new IVF postcode lottery as NHS cuts costs

Childless couples are facing a widening postcode lottery after NHS officials ordered GPs to slash the amount of fertility treatment on offer to cut costs, stark new figures show.

Women in some areas are being denied access to the treatment altogether while others are facing new restrictions which appear to flout national guidelines.

One in five local Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) said they had cut the number of IVF procedures they had funded over the past three years, the study by the health magazine, Pulse, found.

Some trusts have frozen funding for IVF completely while reduced the number of cycles on offer.

Funding chiefs blamed the economic downturn and the looming spending cuts for the decision but campaigners said many infertile couples were now being denied a “fundamental right”.

Under guidance from the National Institute for Health and Clinical excellence (Nice) GPs are advised to offer women under 40 up three cycles of IVF on the NHS.

But several trusts have recently ordered family doctors to cut the number of cycles on offer to two or one.

Nine PCTs – in Luton, Greater Glasgow & Clyde, Waltham Forest, Lambeth, Southwark, Lewisham, Portsmouth, Bolton and West Kent – admitted they had not funded any IVF treatment for two years, acccording to the Pulse study.

For more on this story follow the link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7980879/Couples-face-new-IVF-postcode-lottery-as-NHS-cuts-costs.html

You don't want this idiot to be your donor dad

SOMEHOW the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and Don the landlord don’t really go together.

The HFEA is a scientific body (soon to be axed, as it happens) providing fertility treatment to childless couples.

Last week it announced it was so concerned that many couples are now seeking IVF (in-vitro fertilisation) abroad that they are considering getting more home-grown egg and sperm donors to volunteer by raising the £250 “compensation” payment to much, much more, perhaps even £800.

Donors have to be thoroughly tested for a variety of disorders, meaning several visits to clinics. It is considered unethical for them to be “paid”.

That, I am afraid, is where Don the landlord comes in. Don is, or was, an almost perfect sperm donor, six-foot-two, lean-framed, nicely proportioned, good skin, pleasant angular features, superficially well-adjusted, probably exactly what the clinic was looking for. The trouble with Don the landlord was that he was a commonsense-free zone. He was a disaster.

My fear is that several hundred pounds per donation might lure him out of retirement and he’ll see it as a new call to arms to do the job he was probably best equipped for. Don first turned up in our village as the landlord of the pub by the church, the sort of run-of-the-mill local where lads establish their credentials on the dart boards, the bar billiards table and playing illicit games of cards out the back.

He told little coterie of drinkers he spent most of his time with that every time he made a successful contribution, the sperm bank gave him £25, certainly enough to cover his train ticket and a little illicit trading in Soho, where I supposed he bought his dope.

Instead, I cringed at the thought of women – trusting, child-yearning, unsuspecting women – getting impregnated with the spermatic idiocy of Don and his genes, of a new century where hundreds of my countrymen looked like Don, where the wheels of any industry or any enterprise we had would suddenly seize up because, at the centre of it all, would be a Don lookalike with that slack-jawed, uncomprehending expression he reserved for anything he didn’t understand.

Worse is the thought that Don is still alive in a hospital test-tube – like a good reliable Ford Cortina kept in a garage – and one laboratory technician is at this moment saying to another: “Let’s give her a shot of good old Hampshire Landlord – he seems to hit the bullseye every time.” Towards the end of his tenure, his trade almost non-existent, he could be found snoozing in the hammock he slung up above his public bar.

After a prod or two at the bulge in it he could be persuaded down to pull you a desultory pint. Nineteen years after his departure, we should not be afraid of Dolly the sheep or cloned beef, but the mutations of Don the landlord. I have no idea where he is now. That’s because he disappeared one morning, leaving the pub open to the world and the keys in a new Range Rover he’d somehow persuaded a finance company to buy for him.

But this week’s news about egg and sperm shortage has brought him back with a shiver. Is Don the true father of our nation?

For more on this story follow the link: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/196353