Power

A Note of Caution: Freezing Eggs Is Not a Silver Bullet for Age-Related Infertility

It's no wonder many women believe they'll be able to bear children with frozen eggs whenever they want to—a $4 billion industry is driving the public discourse.

Between the ages of 36 and 38, Richards spent $50,000 to freeze 70 eggs that she plans to thaw, fertilize and insert into her uterus when she is 44 or 46. Golden egg frozen in ice via Shutterstock

In an essay recently published in the Wall Street Journal, Sarah Elizabeth Richards, author of the new book Motherhood Rescheduled, encourages women to ward off age-related infertility by simply freezing their eggs—like she did.

Between the ages of 36 and 38, Richards spent $50,000 to freeze 70 eggs that she plans to thaw, fertilize, and insert into her uterus when she is 44 or 46. “Egg freezing,” she said, “stopped the sadness that I was feeling at losing my chance to have the child I had dreamed about my entire life.” Still looking for a mate at almost 40, Richards says she now goes onto Match.com and has the confidence to tell men that she can “have kids whenever I want.”

While Richards’ decision appears to have provided her with a sense of hope and temporary emotional equilibrium, it may prove to be illusory. Sadly, as millions of women, including me, can attest, the vast majority of assisted reproductive technologies fail. In 2012, of the 1.5 million treatments performed globally, 1.1 million failed––a 77 percent failure rate. In the United States, the overall failure rate was 68 percent. Once optimistic and hopeful about the promise of reproductive science, I endured four failed in vitro fertilization (IVF) cycles, one miscarriage, and two donor egg attempts in which both donors were diagnosed as being infertile.

But it is no wonder that Richards believes she will be able to bear children with her frozen eggs whenever she wants to. A $4 billion industry is driving the public discourse about often unproven discoveries through a lens that focuses attention on the minority of successes rather than the whole messy, complicated story. Growing up in a culture that reveres science, she has been bombarded with overly optimistic and one-sided media stories touting the miracles of creating babies in laboratories. The truth is, many women signing up for treatments do not realize until later the extent to which they are participating in a vast experiment, where evidence-based medicine has yet to establish a reasonable foothold.

The only current independent effort to track the health of all women going through treatments remains largely invisible to patients who might sign up to have their health––and that of their offspring––tracked over time. The voluntary Infertility Family Research Registry is based at the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center and is funded in part by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM). To date, the vast majority of large fertility centers in the United States are not displaying the registry’s placard in their waiting rooms, greatly reducing the potential benefits such a long-term study would provide.

Richards’ desire to protect her ability to bear a biological child is heartfelt, and her willingness to undergo egg freezing procedures that were considered experimental at the time speaks to her commitment–– and her panic–– to try anything to preserve that opportunity. But her statement that this decision was “the best investment” she ever made is premature, to say the least.

The general public knows virtually nothing about the failure and success rates of vitrification––a new flash-freezing technique that has been used to preserve the eggs of women younger than 30 who are facing life-threatening illnesses. While an estimated 1,000 babies have been born from this technology worldwide, there is virtually no data that tells us if these live births were the result of 3,000 or 10,000 trials. We have no idea how many miscarriages or still births may have ensued, and there are few, if any, long-term infant health studies evaluating how flash freezing half of a child’s DNA might affect that child later in life. The one study Richards cites found that 900 babies exhibited no more risk of birth defects than babies conceived naturally by young mothers, but is one study really enough?

Apparently the ASRM believed it was proof enough for them to lift the “experimental” label from the still young procedure last fall. The ASRM Practice Committee said it was not yet ready to endorse widespread use of egg freezing for elective use. However, while randomized controlled studies were rare, the committee did find sufficient evidence to “demonstrate acceptable success rates in young, highly selected populations.” Citing a lack of data on safety, efficacy, cost-effectiveness, and potential emotional risks, their report states, “Marketing this technology for the purpose of deferring childbearing may give women false hope and encourage them to delay childbearing. Patients who wish to pursue this technology should be carefully counseled.”

As would be expected, once their decision became public, their caution about women’s age and infant health was obscured and eventually obliterated by the dust kicked up by a stampede of panicked but hopeful 30- and 40-something women running to the nearest fertility clinic to have their eggs harvested for future use––for anywhere between $10,000 and $15,000 per harvest, or more.

One must wonder why the ASRM felt so compelled to provide a stamp of approval for a procedure still lacking in reliable safety and efficacy data. As legal scholars Debora Spar and Naomi Cahn have written in their books, The Baby Business and Test Tube Babies, respectively, in the context of an unregulated industry in the United States, it is virtually impossible to separate the medical and market forces at play when new techniques and procedures are advertised to potential clients. The blurred boundaries between fertility clinics wanting to provide patients with safe, evidence-based procedures while also needing to generate business to meet their bottom lines puts that much more pressure on consumers to know what they are signing up for.

But when evidence and information is scarce, biased, or non-existent, well-heeled consumers like Richards feel they have no choice but to close their eyes, write a check, and jump off that technological cliff called “hope.” For Richards’ sake, I hope she succeeds. If not, she may well join the ranks of millions of men and women who, since the first IVF baby was born in Britain 35 years ago, have experienced involuntary biological childlessness as a result of delaying parenthood and relying on science for last-minute miracles.