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The journey to conception is a long, difficult road...
U.S. News & World Report, Nov 11, 1996 v121 n19 p10(2)
The baby makers. (Dr. Geoffrey Sher is leading an effort to make the largely unregulated infertility treatment
industry more liable)(Brief Article)
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1996 U.S. News and World Report, Inc.
Infertile couples spend about $2 billion a year trying to have a baby with the help of fertility clinics, but the
vast majority of them fail. A U.S. News investigation ("The Baby Chase" Dec. 5, 1994) found that the high-
tech baby-making industry was taking advantage of infertile couples by keeping sloppy records and
misrepresenting a couple's chances of success. Lawsuits have since been filed against three California
fertility specialists alleging that they used eggs without the donors' consent to get other women pregnant.
Yet the industry has fought even minimal federal oversight, leaving couples to separate truth from hype. Dr.
Geoffrey Sher, executive medical director at the Pacific Fertility Medical Center, in Los Angeles, has drawn
the wrath of his colleagues by offering patients a 90 percent refund if they fail to conceive in three attempts.
Sher and other doctors are also calling publicly for change. Last month, he stepped forward to blast his
colleagues in a speech to the National Advisory Board on Ethics in Reproduction for exploiting patients.
Sher called for standardized record-keeping, external audits of patient records and the adoption of
techniques for reducing the number of multiple births that too often result from in vitro fertilization. "We are
totally unregulated," he says. "We are practicing in the Wild West of medicine."
The baby makers. (Dr. Geoffrey Sher is leading an effort to make the largely unregulated infertility treatment
industry more liable)(Brief Article)
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1996 U.S. News and World Report, Inc.
Infertile couples spend about $2 billion a year trying to have a baby with the help of fertility clinics, but the
vast majority of them fail. A U.S. News investigation ("The Baby Chase" Dec. 5, 1994) found that the high-
tech baby-making industry was taking advantage of infertile couples by keeping sloppy records and
misrepresenting a couple's chances of success. Lawsuits have since been filed against three California
fertility specialists alleging that they used eggs without the donors' consent to get other women pregnant.
Yet the industry has fought even minimal federal oversight, leaving couples to separate truth from hype. Dr.
Geoffrey Sher, executive medical director at the Pacific Fertility Medical Center, in Los Angeles, has drawn
the wrath of his colleagues by offering patients a 90 percent refund if they fail to conceive in three attempts.
Sher and other doctors are also calling publicly for change. Last month, he stepped forward to blast his
colleagues in a speech to the National Advisory Board on Ethics in Reproduction for exploiting patients.
Sher called for standardized record-keeping, external audits of patient records and the adoption of
techniques for reducing the number of multiple births that too often result from in vitro fertilization. "We are
totally unregulated," he says. "We are practicing in the Wild West of medicine."