The Cash Cow in 'Fertility' Medicine
By Pamela M Tsigdinos,
Healthcare in America
| 10. 23. 2016
On average, the cost of a basic IVF cycle in the U.S ranges from $12,000 — $15,000 yet three out of four times it fails
20 million fails. This is one stat not discussed at the latest American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) Scientific Congress and Expo. It’s also not posted on fertility clinic member websites nor shared on their social media feeds but it should be.
Last week thousands of physicians, nurses, scientists and lab technicians gathered in Salt Lake City joined by legions of pharmaceutical representatives, ‘fertility’ entrepreneurs and service providers in full on ‘sell mode.’
It’s been nearly 40 years since in vitro fertilization (IVF) became available. There has been explosive growth in the size and scope of clinics and profit taking but no commensurate improvement in IVF outcomes.
Here are five other facts that aren’t widely known but should be:
Fact #1: ‘Fertility’ is now a huge market. That’s right: a market. The global In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF) market size was valued at $9.6 billion in 2014. A more recent report by Grand View Research, Inc. projects the global ... see more
Related Articles
By Jeffrey Mervis, Science | 01.06.2021
Low-income commuters who rely on public transit face many challenges—multiple transfers, long waits, and off-hour travel—that aren’t measured in the usual ridership surveys. Vanessa Frias-Martinez, a computer scientist at the University of Maryland, College Park, wants to ease their commute...
By Gwen D’Arcangelis, Guest Contributor
| 01.07.2021
Photo by Adrian Lange on Unsplash
Living under the COVID-19 pandemic has justifiably created fear and uncertainty about germs and their evolving contagiousness and lethality. Against the backdrop of the natural evolution of the coronavirus and emerging new strains, many ruminate over further alarming scenarios—from questions about the coronavirus’s possible lab origins, to worry over the possibility of biohackers engineering new pandemic germs. New gene editing technologies like CRISPR make these scenarios all the more frightening, as they...
By Jocelyn Kaiser, Science | 12.22.2020
It’s troubling news that gene therapy researchers have long anticipated: A hemophilia patient injected with a virus carrying a therapeutic gene in a clinical trial has developed a liver tumor. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has halted the...
Transhumanist participation in electoral politics often seems like a complete farce, worthy of nothing but laughter. Sometimes, however, the transhumanist vision seems more like a dire warning of disasters ahead if we do not, as a society, change our course.
Zoltan Istvan was the founder of the U.S. Transhumanist Party, and still owns the trademark, though his own most recent run for President was as a Republican. The Transhumanist Party in 2020 nominated Johannon Ben Zion, apparently to...