A Breather for Struggling Couples in the Coming Decades

JC Sanasam *

IVF (In Vitro Fertilization)

IVF (In Vitro Fertilization) so far is the only means that medical men can do their best as yet for couples who are struggling to get a baby of their own or who are unable to have babies on their own.

When the spouses of a married couple fail to acquire their progeny in a matter of two to three years after their marriage they start to worry about and get aggravatingly conscious why they are unable to create a soul that would continue their DNA's and their genes. After all, what is it God does, if He really exists?

What God does is to create generations and generations of all living organisms, grass, trees, insects, fishes, birds, animals and men. If there are genocides and mass-killing of men, hunting animals and killing them, clearing of jungles or the like of which are to destroy lives and species, it is perhaps none of God's business. These are the spills-over of struggle for existence among the living souls.

Every creature seems to have the natural earthy pursuit of existence, making its life more wholesome at the expense of other lives and species; more so in those who have more of down-to-the-earth greed. God cannot put a hand on this. His is only creation. Living organisms too have an innate longing for having some continuity of their generations. So it becomes a natural instinct of a living organism including man that they should leave their progeny to continue.

IVF (In Vitro Fertilization) so far is the only means that medical men can do their best as yet for couples who are struggling to get a baby of their own or who are unable to have babies on their own. They are generally regarded as infertile couples; the cause may be in the husband or in the wife. What is done in this IVF procedure is to create the embryo (the product of the union of the male sperm and the female ovum or egg), the first stage to form the baby, at an outside environment, outside the body, as there is something wrong suspected in the normal biological way in the couple.

In this procedure usually the most active and potent sperms are selected from the semen of the husband or from that of a donor if the husband fails to yield adequate sperms, and a healthy female egg from the wife too, and they are collected in a special culture dish to allow to fertilize on the dish not inside the uterus (the womb). The process takes two days.

When it is confirmed that satisfactory fertilization has taken place the zygote, the product of the union or the initial embryo structure is implanted at a suitable location of the womb of the wife. If the wife's womb is unhealthy not to be capable of nurturing the growing embryo, it can be implanted in the womb of another willing woman who then becomes the surrogate mother of the baby. With this procedure or the technique the success rate is still only 55 percent.

Moreover another risk of complication is there; that is pregnancy of multiple fetuses (multiple babies in the womb); certain parents also complain that IVF babies have frequent disorders of health, so and so forth. Some of these may be presumptions resulting from extraneous care and over enthusiastic precautions. All babies and children generally do have frequent infections due to poor resistance which is physiological.

Shu Takayama and Gay Smith, two researchers at the University of Michigan, US have modeled a new device to create a wholesome environment for the embryo to be healthy and strong. This innovative device attempts to make the embryo's environment more natural and biological by way of imitating the natural embryo movements and has proved to be more successful.

The mechanism of the action of this novel device is to mimic the natural biological embryo movements in vivo (in the body); and they claim that with this device they can improve the success rate of IVF procedure to 77 percent. The scientists observe that the zygote after the fertilization, when it travels or is to be transported through the fallopian tube to reach the uterus (the womb) it has to be in a special fluid medium with a special biological movement. This is a very important stage and a very crucial impasse for the zygote or embryo as it has to be a healthy cell-unit to be nurtured for a successful implantation and growing into the soil of the womb.

Normally the uterus (the womb) which is like an inverted pitcher has two arms, one on each side, called fallopian tubes, the finger-like end of which collects the emerging ovum (the female egg) from the ovary; transports it through or the egg travels on its own or under synergistic circumstances of the two actions through this fallopian tunnel in this special environment of fluid and movement to meet the sperm, then get fertilized and the resultant embryo travels or get transported through finally to reach the suitable location in the soil of the uterus (the womb).

What these scientists do is in place of the usual dish they place the newly formed embryo in their special device that looks like a small thimble-like funnel having tiny channels at its bottom. These channels filter out unwanted waste products. This procedure helps in maintaining the embryo in a more nutrient fluid. Certain Braille pins maneuvered to support the funnel pulsates some kind of stimulating movement which generates a current that imitates the flow and movement of body fluids and cilia (tiny microscopic hair-like projections inside the fallopian tube) respectively with contractions of muscles.

The embryos grown in this innovative dynamic device were much healthier and stronger than those cultured in a static environment of the conventional dish. The researchers say that this latest innovative technique will not only result in higher pregnancy rates and healthier embryos but also will enable to use less number of embryos more precisely. This also will reduce and prevent the risk of pregnancy with multiple fetuses.

The researchers are confident that with further improvement and familiarity of the tenacity in the technique the success rate will grow further and it eventually will reduce the disheartening feelings of the struggling couples and scientists as well when the IVF fails. Well, it will not take longer much for the innovative technique to be spread far and wide and to prove a breather for the childless couples of the world in the coming decades.