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What if you were trying to get pregnant using in-vitro fertilization (IVF) and suddenly had a greater than 50% chance of succeeding? It's not quite there yet, but a new study has found that using computer-automated, time‐lapse photography of embryos in the laboratory during IVF may improve embryo selection, potentially increasing the chances of pregnancy among women undergoing the procedure, according to newswise.com. As someone who went through this more than once, finally succeeding on the third, fourth and fifth tries (but only one live birth), it raises a real beacon of hope. In the past women were given (at least when I did it, 13 years ago) a 30% chance of success, based on the average woman in good health.  The good news is, it worked a lot of the time, especially for younger women.  But for women in their 40s like me, the success rate was far less impressive. Now labs may actually be able to use a device which records images of developing embryos during the ...

You're not going to believe this (I barely did).  But researchers in London say it may be possible to do IVF procedures for a little over $200 for women in developing countries. That's because embryos apparently require very little care, according to Maria Cheng at the AP.  " A human embryo doesn't need much beyond some basic solutions, a steady pH level and constant temperature," she quotes  Jonathan Van Blerkom, a fertility expert at the University of Colorado,  who developed the new procedure. . "My first reaction was, 'You've got to be kidding,'" he says to Cheng in the article.  The simpler approach allows women to take cheaper fertility tablets to stimulate their ovaries to release more than one egg per month. In conventional IVF, expensive, potent drugs that are injected can produce more than 20 eggs, Cheng notes. With just two test tubes and special solutions, "it's possible to generate the exact same conditions, or ver...

Interesting story today at smartplanet.com.   Designer babies . It's not what you think.  Or maybe it is.  But British researchers have found a way to make a baby using three people.  It's not to make sure the baby has blond hair and blue eyes, and is a girl, with a 150 IQ, but to provide additional genes to prevent "debilitating and potentially fatal mitochondrial disease." According to David Worthington, mitochondria are the parts of cells known as 'power stations' because they provide energy.  "Diseased mitochondria leaves people weak and can cause blindness, heart failure and death," he writes. This disorder affects one in every 6,500 babies in the UK, according to the BBC. The way it works is through an in-vitro fertilization procedure.  Doctors extract eggs from the mother and sperm from the father, then combine them in the lab with a third person's disease-free mitochrondria.  I remember talk about something like this when I was tryi...