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Fighting for in vitro fertilization in Canada

Broadcast Date: July 31, 1978

British doctors have helped create the world's first test tube baby. But there are no fertility clinics in Canada offering the cutting-edge procedure. “What happened in Britain would never happen here,” complains Sabina Erlich, an infertile woman taking part in a CBC-TV forum on in vitro fertilization. Erlich and her husband feel Canadian doctors are too cautious. Dr. Ron Davidson argues that the procedure is unsafe: Sabina doesn't care; she's prepared to try anything to get pregnant.

Fighting for in vitro fertilization in Canada

• A woman under the age of 35 is considered infertile if she doesn't get pregnant after one year of trying.
• After one month of unprotected intercourse, 25 per cent of fertile women will become pregnant. Sixty per cent will conceive after six months.
• Female infertility increases with age. One in 7 women aged 30 to 34 are infertile. A quarter of women aged 40 to 44 cannot conceive.

• In rare cases, a woman produces antibodies to her partner's sperm. Her body treats the sperm as foreign invaders, like cold viruses or bacteria, and produces special proteins to attack the male cells. These antibodies attach to the sperm and incapacitate them before they can pass through the woman's cervix and into her uterus.
• Possible treatments includes inserting sperm directly into a woman's uterus or in vitro fertilization.

Other reproductive technologies include the following:
• assisted hatching, in which a small hole is made in the outer shell of the embryo to help it hatch;
• blastocyt transfer, in which the fertilized embryos develop outside the mother's body for twice as long as usual in order to weed out the less viable ones; and
• zygote intrafallopian reproductive transfer, in which the zygote, or fertilized egg, is placed into the woman's fallopian tube after one day.

Fighting for in vitro fertilization in Canada

Medium: Television

Program: CBC Newsmagazine

Broadcast Date: July 31, 1978

Guest(s): Patrick Beirne, Ron Davidson, Alan Erlich, Sabina Erlich, Father Bela Somfai

Host: Don McNeill

Duration: 10:32

Last updated:
March 2, 2004

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