Delaying Motherhood: New Techniques May Help Preserve Women's Fertility
LOU WATERS, CNN ANCHOR: On the medical front today, many women who have delayed motherhood to pursue career or other personal goals find they have trouble getting pregnant once they have reached their mid-30s or older. Scientists now are developing new and promising techniques to preserve fertility for those women. CNN medical correspondent Rhonda Rowland with out report.</s>RHONDA ROWLAND, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Hope Merrill has what she calls a full life; 15 years ago, she started a publishing company, but like many busy women, Hope eventually heard her biological clock ticking.</s>HOPE MERRILL, CANCER SUFFERER: Yes, I thought: One day, I'll get to the babies. And then, at 35, I think I just kind of said: Whoa, wait a minute.</s>ROWLAND: But there was a major glitch in her plan. Doctors diagnosed her with breast cancer. The chemotherapy would likely make her sterile.</s>MERRILL: So those two facts became very apparent: that, you know, one, I'll most likely be sterile. I have no family. And there's really not a lot I can do about that.</s>ROWLAND: Then she heard doctors at Reproductive Biology Associates were removing and freezing ovaries.</s>DR. DOROTHY MITCHELL-LEEF, REPRODUCTIVE BIOLOGY ASSN.: If we learn how to put those tissues back correctly in the right place, given the right optimal conditions, that perhaps we will be able to provide ovarian function in those patients.</s>ROWLAND: Not now, but perhaps in the future.</s>MERRILL: So I was banking on, in five years that perhaps they would have the technology ready so that we could have children.</s>ROWLAND (on camera): Doctors at Reproductive Biology Associates say they have four women waiting to use their frozen ovarian tissue to get pregnant. Now, new research in monkeys suggests they may not have to wait much longer. (voice-over): When frozen ovarian tissue was transplanted into the monkey's arms, researchers at the Jones Institute had a 50 percent success rate.</s>DR. JOHN SCHNORR, JONES INST., EASTERN VIRGINIA MED. SCHOOL: What we have demonstrated is normal function with normal estrogen production, normal progesterone production and the production of mature eggs, eggs that are capable of being fertilized.</s>ROWLAND: And an Italian research team determined that, while freezing eggs is rarely successful in producing a baby, all 13 children born using frozen eggs were normal, suggesting freezing techniques may be safe. Canadian researchers are working on a different approach to preserving fertility. They're calling it a career pill.</s>DR. ROGER GOSDEN, MCGILL UNIVERSITY: A career pill would slow down the rate at which these eggs are being lost from the ovary. That would mean that menopause would be later.</s>ROWLAND: So women in their 30s and 40s would have an easier time getting pregnant. But researchers are still trying to identify the genes involved in egg development, so the career pill is still at least 10 years off.</s>GOSDEN: I must emphasize that, at the moment, the freezing procedure is the only one that we know that stands a very good chance of working. The career pill is still a researcher's dream.</s>ROWLAND: In three years, Hope Merrill will know if her cancer is cured. By then, doctors may know how to use frozen ovarian tissue.</s>MERRILL: If it doesn't happen for me, then I hope it can for other people. That would be my hope.</s>ROWLAND: Not just for women with cancer, but any woman delaying motherhood. Rhonda Rowland, CNN, Atlanta.</s>WATERS: And in a related story, one Canadian fertility clinic says it will not allow women over the age of 42 to enroll in its in vitro fertilization program, unless they can find younger women to donate their eggs. The Ottawa clinic's medical director says accepting older women for this expensive procedure is dishonest, since the program has never successfully achieved pregnancy and birth in a woman over age 42.