I don't necessarily have problems with getting children through fertility treatments if your body has no problems to carry or bear children, but only to get pregnant. However, it is indeed extremely silly to still see it as a blessing to have sextuplets if you KNOW it's only because of a treatment performed by a doctor. And carrying 6 children is totally against the "if your body has no problems to carry or bear children" I mentioned earlier, because no body can safely carry or beat that many children in one pregnancy. A child is a blessing, so are twins, but more than two is no blessing even if it would be completely natural. Humans aren't made to cary more than two. Trying to carry 6 when it is very obvious that the guy who put the 6 in was not God, is a crime.

I'm not sure, but I think that in Belgium nowadays they don't even go for more than 2 from the start, in order to recude this kind of mess. Of course, if people still end up with having more than 2, the usual procedure is to limit to two, which the vast majority of people does. Not starting with more than two (sometimes the procedure is to "try" something like 12, and remove some if more than 2 "catch") of course increases the possibility of requiring more treatments, but on the other hand it reduces an ethical problem. I don't know if they also try just 1 per treatment, in order to reduce the amount of twins. Of course, medically speaking twins usually aren't a problem.

Someone in my family was pregnant from -what she claimed to be- a natural triplet. One of them died quite early in the pregnancy. Of course she was partially sad, but she was also relieved. She was a bit ashamed because she felt partially relieved, but IMO that is perfectly understandable, and as bad it is for the one foetus, it is far better for the other two and the mother. And indeed, the natural death of the one foetuses was a good choice for Nature to take, because the mother cannot take this decision. At least, not for a natural triplet where the cause and medical nead is more subtle. Sixtuplets after a treatment are clear-cut: the treatment was not successful, and yes it's too bad for 4 of the foetusses, but this situation needs to be corrected. The reduction of the moral and medical issues is a reason for me to be pro limiting the amount of "trials" per treatment to 2 foetusses. Even if both of them are succesful, it's still "only" twins.

I think that in the future as the treatments are further improved, we'll see only one trial per treatment and this mess will be history.

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

I would love to know how much this whole thing cost, from beginning to end. From the first doctor appointment to discuss fertility drugs to this final stay in the hospital - and everything in between.

Obviously, getting one healthy baby from a natural pregnancy start to finish, would be quite a lot cheaper even though giving birth still isn't cheap and any pregnancy has its costs. Getting pregnant naturally tends not to cost a lot, so you start cheap .

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

To the couple or to the health care system as a whole??

My guess is that, so far, the couple have only paid for the IVF and their deductible from insurance for the rest of the bills. That means that the insurance co. and the hospital are picking up the rest between them. As neither entity is a charitable institution (at least, I THINK the hospital isn't a charity hospital--may be wrong on that one), the people who are ultimately picking up the tab are the rest of the people paying for health care.

That means WE will be paying the rest of the tab.

Ah, the miracle of modern medicine!

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The dose makes the poison--Paracelsus (1493-1541) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus

I don't know. That's why I'm asking--Noclevername

Intelligence may not be clearly defined, but you know stupid when you see it--Noclevername

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge--Carl Sagan (1934-1996)

Well, in this case I don't think you'd need to blame modern medicine. I think the doctors didn't support the pregnancy of 6 children.

What is the case though, is the "triumhps" of modern medicine that keep some people "alive" where it is very doubtful this is the best choice.

Luckily, these days there is no longer any prestige connected to keeping people in the deepest possible coma "alive" for 15 years, so that horror is out of the way. And as it appears, more people chose to give a child that is born extremely early the best regular medical needs it can get, but let nature decide what happens instead of starting a pointless ride of 60 operations that at best give the child the prospect of 2 years of hell before dying. Of course we should never make the decision of euthanasia an easy one, but I think that the current medical culture is quite good at self-controlling the difference between saving lives and pointlessly not letting a unfixable body die.

Whenever there are realistic chances of a life that still has any form of value, we should do all the possible to give the person that life. For example, when you're heavily burnt but we can make sure you survive and can live on with 90% of your mental capabilities (complete amnesia multipe times per year tends to influence your mental capabilities at least short term, especially not finding words for rather common objects is a typical short-term influence that can still last over a year) and "medium" physical handicap (sorry, couldn't find a better word ), we should have funds to give that person 30 expensive operations to fix him up the best we can. And indeed we do, and I'm very glad for that.

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

Not here, unfortunately!

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The dose makes the poison--Paracelsus (1493-1541) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus

I don't know. That's why I'm asking--Noclevername

Intelligence may not be clearly defined, but you know stupid when you see it--Noclevername

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge--Carl Sagan (1934-1996)

Everyone with good backup electricity can ceep a machine running that pumps air and blood at the right ratio...it's quite pathetic as a medical centre to keep the machine running just to improve your statistics. That's something that happened a lot a few decades ago, but since about 10-15 years they appeared to have drastically reduced this. The same for children that are born way too early, but there I still see some prestige overhere as well, things like "we've kept an X weeks alive!" which also tend to be newspaper headlines. Cool, don't forget to mention the respiration, circulation and feeding support equipment the child will need for the rest of its life, the fact that it's blind and deaf, will never be able to walk, will never be able to learn to speak and won't get older than 2 years anyway, years that will be spent in hospitals. Congrats.

I don't think they keep anyone in extreme and stable coma alive here any longer than family members want to. And luckily (IMO), it appears most people who are enountered with a braindead or very close to braindead person do decide this life has ended and give the body the right to end indeed. I think that braindead, even with a (largely) independently functioning body, is considered dead here, so this falls outside of any euthanasia regulations.

What's harder than a 'largely) braindead person kept alive at a machine though, is a body that still can survive without aid of machines but still the person shows zero activity or interaction with his environment. His body lives, but what about the person? A lot harder. Switching off the machine that keeps him "alive" is one thing, actively killing a working body that holds a dead or near-dead mind is something different. Luckily this is quite rare.

Of course we must take care of persons that are/were in a coma but clearly aren't (brain)dead or people who are currently in a very deep coma but do show sign that hint at possible improvement.

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

Not as rare as one would hope. You speak of someone who is in a persistant vegetative state, like Terri Schiavo.

Unfortunately, there aren't any clear legal precedents in the US for dealing with those cases, I believe (somebody feel free to jump in and correct me if I'm wrong! ).

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The dose makes the poison--Paracelsus (1493-1541) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus

I don't know. That's why I'm asking--Noclevername

Intelligence may not be clearly defined, but you know stupid when you see it--Noclevername

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge--Carl Sagan (1934-1996)

I meant even "worse" than that. Schiavo wasn't in a coma, she had a sleep cycle. Granted, it was only more camouflage of a "working" body around a dead brain, but I had people in mind that don't even awake from the coma but do have a body that keeps its own organs working.

The argument remains the same of course. Indeed it's not THAT rare, but it appears to me the category of working body + some amount of consciousness or non-working body + non-working brain is larger than working body + completely or very nearly completely non-working brain. However keeping people on life support machines for a long time can cause a damaged body to repair while the damaged mind never repairs, resulting to an increase of that last category. Of course, stopping life support on a dead brain earlier on doesn't let it come that far in some cases.

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

I don't know about birth not being cheap. My dad told me the other day that the costs for my sister giving birth were about the same as 2 or 3 MRIs.

All those fertility treatments, though, and everything else with these sextuplets--I don't want to know how much it cost.

It will cost a lot more, but I don't see the cost of 2 or 3 MRIs as particularly cheap .

Of course, it all also depends on the kind of health care system and accompanying bills, which can differ severely per country, or are weighed in health insurance and taxes more than on the bill itself, so it's quite hard to compare.

edit to add: according to an article, giving birth in belgium would costs over 1000€ if you don't have a health insurance covering giving birth, but I think most people do have a HI covering giving birth. That figure is assuming you only need to have the basic amount of hospitalisation days and there are no further problems. I don't consider that cheap, but of course it's far less than many other treatments. If you have a proper HI, it costs far less, of course you have to pay your HI. But assuming your HI pays back at least 2/3rds of the costs (and I assume they pay back more), that would normally make giving birth rather cheap indeed. Having a child is a tad bit more expensive .

The medical care for the sextuplet story must cost orders of magnitude more per child.

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

Thanks for taking the time to explain this, Doodler. But I see a lot of trouble with distinguishing one type of regulation from another and deciding what is nanny-statism and what isn't. Are seatbelt laws nanny-stateism when my being propelled through the windscreen of a car can definitely affect the lives of others? For example, people my corpse happens to land on? After all, human remains are a biohazard.

I don't see nanny-stateism as being a threat to liberty in my country, but threats to liberty are usually fairly direct here. For example acts of parliment enslaved segments of the population for millitary service several times last century. And it wasn't until the 60's that indigenous Australians legally became citizens. Before that they were considered fauna.

Well. I'm with you there, too, of course. Still.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Yes, it is, and despite the fact that people have loudly called it such, those laws exist.

Its not an all or nothing world. We can't escape the reality that very influential people have an issue with telling people how to live through legislation, so I'm realistic enough to see writing on the wall and enjoy my Krispy Kremes while they're still legal.

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

So would armed forces be nanny-stateism?

Nanny, Shmanny. There need to be some laws to protect kids from idiot parents, and the rest of us from corporations who have only the bottom line at heart. If that means losing a few trans-fats or smokers, Boo Hoo.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

I'm of the opinion that these implantations should be limited to two (as was stated earlier in the thread). It may take more tries, but it would reduce or eliminate the risk of people putting themselves in a position to make an ethical choice they aren't willing to make. I also agree with earlier sentiments regarding the "miracle" of sextuplets. It was a medical treatment that worked, that's all. Worked a little too well in fact. I miracle would be if they conceived naturally even though x-rays before and after showed both tubes blocked. Even then, there would be some explanation. A temporary relief of the blockage due to the dye being forced through to take the x-rays is one example.

One belief on infertility is that if God indeed does try to tell us things - infertility is a way of encouraging would be parents to adopt and look after those that can't look after themselves. Some religious people may view those seeking fertility treatment as ignoring God's will and placing personal desire first. I hope that doesn't cross too far into the religion area.

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Spock Jenkins of the Vulcan Jenkins'.

Can't answer for Fred, but I also found the subject title crass. Not because of the parents, but because it seems callous towards the dead infants involved.

I agree with Tucson Tim's sentiments about adoption vs. the selfish spending of 10's of thousands of dollars.

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“I shall always be convinced that a watch proves a watchmaker, and that a universe proves a God” ~Voltaire

Tens of thousands got her pregnant. Treating those kids will push a million very easily.

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

Yeah.

I understand the desire to have biological children, but when it's not possible...adopt.

Unfortunately for some folks, the ability to reproduce is *the* hallmark of their lives; makes them feel important (despite having zero fertility issues). Otherwise they'd likely accomplish nothing of note.

My aunt is that way, and excessively proud of her offspring (to great-grandchildren). They don't have a superior attitude, but she sure does; having given birth was a grand accomplishment apparently. :-\ And though her offspring haven't accomplished anything grander in life than her nieces, my sister and I are apparently knuckle-scraping subhumans by comparison.

Some folks are convinced their genes are vastly superior and must be spread...for whatever reason (even if their last name is not Trump or Windsor).

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“I shall always be convinced that a watch proves a watchmaker, and that a universe proves a God” ~Voltaire

I find there's a depressing split happening when people say "put it in god's hand" about which fetuses survive, but didn't say so when it came to using fertility drugs and in-vitro fertilization to get pregnant in the first place.

Personally I would be most in favor of requiring an affidavit from both parents that termination of some of the fetuses must be allowed before procedures with a known risk of high order multiples can be started.

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‘To those who regard “crime fiction” as some sacred icon which must follow a rigid formula, I will always be the man who writes 18-syllable haiku.’Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

Yes!

I don't understand why that isn't done.

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The dose makes the poison--Paracelsus (1493-1541) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus

I don't know. That's why I'm asking--Noclevername

Intelligence may not be clearly defined, but you know stupid when you see it--Noclevername

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge--Carl Sagan (1934-1996)

That was kind of a sticky point with me at the outset... One of my responses would be (were it that I were a believer), "Lady, isn't the fact that you're not getting pregnant normally kind of a message from above?"

But then, religions only ever tell the listener exactly what they want to hear...

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

Weirdly, I would have said "even if their last name is Trump..."

*rimshot*

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

One wonders if there are any websites out there that have identified The Donald as the Last Trump?

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A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

The only problem with this method is that there would be no legal way to force termination on somebody should they happen to change their mind.

Speaking of changing ones mind. This is one thing that scares people away from domestic adoptions in the US. There is a concern out there that (at least in the US) the biological parent might change their mind after the adoption and decide they want their child back. Even if the adoptive parent wins in court (which is no guarantee), there is still a prolonged legal battle that can be very expensive in addition to the adoption expenses already paid. Or further, after you go through all the trials and tribulations of raising a child, they decide they want to find their "real" mother or father. That's why so many here would rather pay to adopt children from other country's or go through the risks associated with invitro. In both of these cases, there is no biological parent to ever have to deal with.

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Spock Jenkins of the Vulcan Jenkins'.

Two opinions on this one:

#1 - These people are either selfish morons or uneducated slobs for not reducing the number of fetuses as advised.

#2 - Not one cent of tax generated money should be used to reduce their financial burden for making said moronic decision.

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

I really enjoyed a great article from The Onion quite a while back where God answered some kids prayers. His answer was "No."

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17937811/

The medical community finally sounds off on this.

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.