The Business of IVF: How Human Eggs Went from Simple Cells to a Valuable Commodity
By Catherine Waldby,
The Conversation
| 10. 03. 2019
I think they collected […] maybe, six eggs. I think we got four embryos out of that […] One was transferred and three were frozen. So, the fresh cycle didn’t work. Tried a frozen one, didn’t work. Went to try the third frozen and they told me that one didn’t survive unfreezing, so then we had one left and that didn’t work, so we had no embryos left. So we did a fresh egg cycle again, and they got even less this time […] So I was thinking this is all going to be wasting time. But […] I think they fertilised four eggs, and then there was only one viable one, which is my baby.
Eva, a teacher in her early 30s, describes in my recent book The Oocyte Economy: the Changing Meaning of Human Eggs, a very common experience for women who have fertility treatment.
Many women and couples, encouraged by success stories and marketing, hope their years of unsuccessful attempts to conceive a child naturally are over, and fertility treatment will work.
Assisted reproductive technologies cover a...
Related Articles
By Jonathan Matthews, GMWatch | 12.11.2025
In our first article in this series, we investigated the dark PR tactics that have accompanied Colossal Bioscience’s de-extinction disinformation campaign, in which transgenic cloned grey wolves have been showcased to the world as resurrected dire wolves – a...
By Jenny Lange, BioNews | 12.01.2025
A UK toddler with a rare genetic condition was the first person to receive a new gene therapy that appears to halt disease progression.
Oliver, now three years old, has Hunter syndrome, an inherited genetic disorder that leads to physical...
By Simar Bajaj, The New York Times | 11.27.2025
A common cold was enough to kill Cora Oakley.
Born in Morristown, N.J., with virtually no immune system, Cora was diagnosed with severe combined immunodeficiency, a rare genetic condition that leaves the body without key white blood cells.
It’s better...
By Rachel Hall, The Guardian | 11.30.2025
Couples are needlessly going through IVF because male infertility is under-researched, with the NHS too often failing to diagnose treatable causes, leading experts have said.
Poor understanding among GPs and a lack of specialists and NHS testing means male infertility...