Letter to the editor regarding "At Birth, Tales of Joy and Heartbreak"

To the Editor:

“The Gift of Life, and Its Price” reports that the fertility industry’s professional organization encourages its members to transfer fewer embryos, so as to produce fewer multiple pregnancies and premature babies. The organization, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, is to be commended for these efforts.

But its guidelines are routinely flouted. The society could put teeth behind its rules by publicly suspending the memberships of fertility practices in noncompliance. And it has resisted calls for public regulation and oversight.

Recent experiences with the financial sector have dramatized the dangers of inadequate public policy. The fertility industry, too, demonstrates the limits of self-regulation. Public regulation must be carefully written and not used to advance other agendas like opposition to reproductive rights. It’s past time for the federal government to set rules for the fertility industry and establish ways to enforce them.

Marcy Darnovsky
Berkeley, Calif., Oct. 11, 2009

The writer is associate executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society.