Two (or three or eight) embryos no better than one, IVF study says

Timed perfectly in the still-buzzing hullabaloo over the octomom, a new study has cast doubt on the American practice of implanting multiple embryos when doing IVF, in the hopes of upping the odds of a successful pregnancy. The study found that implanting multiple embryos at a time didn’t increase the odds, and of course it does increase the costs and the dangers brought by multiple births.

Our Wild Western approach to fertility treatment contrasts with the more regulated European model, which it appears not only has safety and cost-containment to say for itself, but also effectiveness. The elephant in the room, of course is our insane employer-based healthcare system. Here’s hoping that studies like these encourage Obama and others, as they seek to reform our healthcare system and contain its out-of-control costs, to look at placing limits on the number of embryos that can legally be implanted at a single go.

So far, even as discussion of cost-containment is getting lots of play, I haven’t heard discussion of birth practices. Yet the American love of technology has spectacularly played itself out when it comes to birth, turning a basic human rite of passage into a miracle of science. Not, in fact, quite such a miracle, if you look at what we have to show for it: rates of maternal and infant mortality, premature birth, and complications that are nothing to brag about. Talk about win-win: changing our birth system to something less medicalized would contain costs and improve health. And regulating reproductive technologies by limiting embryo implantation would be one step in this effort. For starters, it would likely bring our out-of-control C-section rate down significantly.

I’m also fascinated by the sociological implications of our IVF practices. America has been engaging in a living social experiment: What does a dramatic rise in the incidence of twins (and triplets) do to a society? I hope some brave sociologist plans to study the phenom, even as it may be coming to an end. Historians may someday speak of this era’s children as “Generation Twin.”