I've just been reading about the triplets born to a woman of 66 in Northern India. Her doctor seems rather proud to announce that she is the oldest woman in the world to give birth to triplets. This was apparently her third attempt at IVF and she had three embryos transferred as the two embryos put back in the earlier cycles had failed to implant. The three babies are now in intensive care as they are very underweight.
The treatment was carried out at the same clinic in Haryana where a woman of 70 who became the world's oldest mother was treated. The clinic seems to specialise in treating pensioners and the website is quite bizarre, featuring pictures of elderly couples next to tiny babies. In India, the average age expectancy for a woman is 66 and it's even younger for a man, so the clinic are helping to create babies whose parents are highly unlikely to live past their first few years. And surely carrying three babies and then having a Caesarean at 66 is hardly going to increase your life expectancy...
It's stories like these that have to make you glad that we have such a highly regulated system in the UK, and that our fertility doctors consider what is right for potential parents and children when they are making decisions about treatment, rather than the desire to break new ground in totally unethical territory.
Remarkable but slightly awkward and offering plenty of room for explanation - like me coming home with a $5,000 Rhino Trophy and explaining "But I needed it!"
ReplyDeleteCheers, we understand,
http://merewether-life.blogspot.com
I'm 33 praying that I'll be able to have children soon -
ReplyDelete66 with triplets! OH MY! Oh my!