Satu rencana menarik yang mempamirkan komersialisme rawatan kesuburan demi meragut keuntungan
By MIRIAM ZOLL and PAMELA TSIGDINOS
ON
Sunday in New York City, a trade show called Fertility Planit will showcase the
latest inventions in the world of reproductive medicine under a banner that
reads: “Everything You Need to Create Your Family.” Two dozen sessions will
feature many of the sponsors’ products and therapies, with an emphasis on
hopeful breakthroughs ranging from genetic testing to embryo thawing techniques
to genome sequencing.
But
the fair’s most powerful strategy is the suggestion that all your answers can
be found within the event hall — and that the power to overcome infertility can
be found within yourself.
As
former fertility patients who endured failed treatments, we understand how
seductive that idea is.
Americans
love an uphill battle. “Don’t give up the fight” is our mantra. But the refusal
to accept physical limitations, when applied to infertility, can have
disturbing consequences.
Medical
science has achieved great feats, improved and saved the lives of many. But
when it comes to assisted reproductive technologies, science fails far more
often than is generally believed.
The European Society of Human Reproduction and
Embryology reports that, on average, of the 1.5 million assisted
reproductive cycles performed worldwide, only 350,000 resulted in the birth of
a child. That is a 77 percent global failure rate. In the United States, the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts the overall failure rate at
almost 70 percent.
Behind
those failed cycles are millions of women and men who have engaged in a
debilitating, Sisyphus-like battle with themselves and their infertility,
involving daily injections, drugs, hormones, countless blood tests and other
procedures.
Thirty-five
years after British scientists brought the world’s first “test-tube baby” to
life, assisted reproduction is a $4
billion-a-year industry. It’s hard to miss the marketing and advertisements
associated with fertility clinics and service providers that are understandably
eager to do what any business does best: sell to prospective customers.
But
what they’re selling is packaged in hope and sold to customers who are at their
wits’ end, desperate and vulnerable. Once inside the surreal world of
reproductive medicine, there is no obvious off-ramp; you keep at it as long as
your bank account, health insurance or sanity holds out.
It’s
no wonder that, fueled by magical thinking, the glorification of parenthood and
a cultural narrative that relentlessly endorses assisted reproductive
technology, those of us going through treatments often turn into “fertility
junkies.” Even among the patient-led infertility community, the prevailing
belief is that those who walk away from treatments without a baby are simply
not strong enough to run the gantlet of artificial conception. Those who quit
are, in a word, weak.
As a
result, both of us pursued increasingly invasive and often experimental
interventions, many of whose long-term health risks are still largely unknown.
Now
we know better. Ending our treatments was one of the bravest decisions we ever
made, and we did it to preserve what little remained of our shattered selves,
our strained relationships and our depleted bank accounts. No longer under the
spell of the industry’s seductive powers, we study its marketing tactics with
eagle eyes, and understand how, like McDonald’s, the fertility industry works
to keep people coming back for more.
Some
people do, of course, become parents through this technology. But we rarely
hear from the other side, former patients who, in refusing to give up, endured
addictive, debilitating and traumatizing cycles. Those contemplating treatments
have a right to know about the health risks, ethical concerns, broken marriages
and, for many, deep depression often associated with failed treatments. They
need objective, independent advice from health care and mental health professionals
focused on the person’s well-being instead of the profit.
Being
unable to bear children is a painful enough burden to carry, without society’s
shaming and condemning those who recognize that their fertility fantasy is
over. It is time to rein in the hype and take a more realistic look at the
taboos and myths surrounding infertility and science’s ability to “cure” it.
Miriam Zoll is the author of
the memoir “Cracked Open: Liberty, Fertility and the Pursuit of High-Tech
Babies.” Pamela Tsigdinos is the
author of the memoir “Silent Sorority: A Barren Woman Gets Busy, Angry, Lost
and Found.”
The New York Times, September 11, 2013
