NATS 1675 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Louise Brown, Miraculous Births, Blastocyst
Document Summary
Miraculous birth of louise brown in 1978: first baby born outside of a womb. 1 in 4 babies will have problems. Ivf fails 70 percent of the time. Pgd = success in healthy babies: relationship between ivf and multiple births, weight loss, disabilities, etc. Because 70 percent of all embryos fail to develop, doctors transfer back several in the hope that at least one will turn into a baby. By transferring back only two embryos at the blastocyst stage, doctors avoid the risks of multiples without diminishing the chance of a pregnancy. But not every embryo can make it to the fifth day. A large number of embryos are implanted into a women"s womb for the hope that one will develop. Cytoplasmic transfer: a technique in which cytoplasm from a donor egg is drawn into a pipette containing a single sperm from the male partner, after which that donated cytoplasm and the sperm are injected into the patient"s egg.