At first, the world celebrated Nadya Suleman's octuplets as a medical miracle. But reaction to the Jan. 26 births quickly devolved from ballyhoo to backlash after the public learned that she had six other children through in vitro fertilization and was living on welfare.
Ethicists, medical providers and average citizens are asking why any physician would help Suleman, a single mother in Whittier, have that many children. Some said the case is evidence that the nation's $3 billion, self-regulated fertility industry needs government oversight.
“This case is an example of fertility services run amok,” said Lori Andrews, director of the Institute for Science, Law and Technology at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.
But others, including many fertility doctors who readily concede the octuplets case defies medical guidelines and common sense, insist it is an aberration.
The first octuplets in the United States were born in 1998, also through in vitro fertilization.
“This doesn't happen very often. It shouldn't ever happen. But one has to be careful not to be reactionary to something that happens once a decade,” said Dr. Sanjay Agarwal of the Suleman octuplets. He is a clinical professor of reproductive medicine and director of fertility services at the University of California San Diego. Read the rest.......
Source: San Diego Union Tribune
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