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"...Dr. Jacques Testart...believed that in ten years there would be an epidemic of premature menopause and reproductive cancers caused by (fertility) drugs....I asked why he and other scientists were continuing their work despite these concerns. Testart's answer was chilling: 'Because...we are learning a lot about conception and contraception, and that is the important thing.'"
Ann Pappert
Ms. Magazine 2000
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Women undergoing egg retrieval undertake real yet poorly studied health risks.
To retrieve her eggs, a woman first takes one set of powerful synthetic hormones to shut down her ovaries, then another to hyperstimulate them to induce a yield of eggs many times the normal number. Whether this is done as part of her own fertility treatment, or to donate eggs to another woman, or for medical research, the process is the same.
Pressures on young women to donate eggs are increasing. AHB joins other groups calling for more and better studies of egg donor risks so that women may be offered a meaningful informed consent before agreeing to have their ovaries hyperstimulated and their eggs retrieved. AHB calls for a national registry to track the health and well-being of women donating eggs, the prohibition of payment for egg donation, and a moratorium on egg donation for research until the long-term health risks are better understood..
IF YOU OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW HAS GONE THROUGH THE EGG RETRIEVAL PROCESS AND IS CONCERNED BY IMMEDIATE OR LONG-TERM HEALTH ISSUES, PLEASE CONTACT US AT:
info@humanebiotech.org
Information you share with us will remain confidential and be referenced anonymously.
WHAT ARE THE KNOWN HEALTH RISKS ASSOCIATED WITH EGG RETRIEVAL?
Vaginal, intra-abdominal, and intestinal bleeding
Post-anesthesia pain
Ovarian hyper-stimulation syndrome, mild to severe:
-- bloating, nausea, vomiting, shortness of breath
-- blood clots
-- organ failure
-- death
Infertility
Possible ovarian and other cancers
CLONING RESEARCH INCREASES THE DEMAND FOR WOMEN'S EGGS. WHY?
Scientists want to create clonal embryos in the hopes of deriving patient-specific embryonic stem cells to study disease and possibly find treatments. No one has ever succeeded in creating human stem cells in this fashion, nor have scientists found ways to prevent embryonic stem cells produced by other means from growing in an uncontrolled fashion and creating tumors.
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HOW ARE WOMEN'S EGGS HARVESTED?
A woman must inject herself daily with hormones for one to three weeks. These hormones stimulate the growth of ovarian follicles, suppress ovulation, and promote egg maturation. When the eggs are ready the woman is brought into surgery, given intravenous sedation, and a trans-vaginal probe is inserted into her vagina. A hollow needle emerges from the probe, pierces the back of the vagina and is pushed into the ovary, where the eggs are sucked out of each follicle one by one. Where women naturally produce one egg a month, a woman undergoing this procedure typically produces at least a dozen eggs, although reports of harvesting many more than that are not unusual.
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CONSIDER THESE WOMEN who have suffered serious health consequences or death after having their ovaries stimulated using synthetic hormomes.
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For more information on the risks of egg donation see:
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