Sunday, December 27, 1998

Octuplets raise questions about fertility drugs

A woman in Houston has given birth to eight children, and in this instance of multiple offspring resulting from use of a fertility drug, let's skip the hoopla. As a physician quoted in a press account notes, mothers can die when this happens. The infants can die. If they don't, many or all may go through life with incapacitating deformities. The medical costs associated with the births can be astronomical.

Some critics point out that, when states require insurance companies to pay for fertility treatments, which can cost many thousands of dollars each time one is used, patients do not need to safeguard their own funds by seeking a one-time, high-risk hormone treatment.

Some such treatments virtually assure pregnancy but can also overstimulate ovaries. These critics are obviously suggesting that states require fertility coverage by insurance firms. Maybe they should. The problem with such restrictive steps by states is that they may impinge on choices that most patients, physicians and businesses handle responsibly, and that they often mean higher insurance premiums for everyone.

What is obviously important is for physicians themselves to take a good, hard look at the mounting evidence of what too often happens with certain fertility drugs and to adopt and stick to practices that afford people the chance of being parents without inflicting on them the possibility of prolonged misery.