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Date Added: 15 July 2006 |
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| One in a Million: The Real Story of Ivf And the Fight to Forge a Family |
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| Sherry Sontag |
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The first investigative look into the medical miracle that has also become an unregulated, lucrative industry, by a journalist who has experienced first-hand both its wonders and its dangers
Increasingly doctors are telling women and couples that in vitro fertilization is their best chance to have a baby. The procedure is advancing so quickly, it is replacing most other treatments for infertility. Since the first baby was born a generation ago, there are now more than one million IVF children in the world. Still, at least twice that many families have had their hearts and bank accounts broken in the attempt for their own one in a million.
IVF, after all, remains an experiment, and an imperfect one at that. It has never had any significant public funding for research and is instead supported by patients, human lab rats, who are willing to give almost anything and to go through almost anything for a child.
Sherry Sontag entered this world of raw emotion, medicine and commerce in an effort to win a baby of her own. To understand this field that so often blends art, science and science fiction, she interviews the scientists and doctors who have created IVF, and those that continue to push it. She also talks to the people whose experiences, good and bad, are often airbrushed out of the statistics.
One in a Million will answer the questions every IVF patient inevitably asks: "How did I get here?" "How should I go about this?" and "Is it worth it?" |
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