I recently watched Nadya Suleman — the Crazy Baby Lady as she’s being called on the Net – being interviewed by Ann Curry.
Now, we’ve had lots of reasons to excoriate this woman. The 14 children. The lack of a job. The pending homelessness of this entire family. The list goes on.
But after watching that interview, I’ve found there’s yet another reason: promoting falsehoods about science.
Here’s what Nadya said:
“A lot of people are not aware of the statistics involved in IVF.There is a very low probability of success in most procedures and on any given procedure, a 50 percent chance one will grow, maybe less.”
Low probability of success? 50 percent chance? Seriously, any fertility clinic these days that doesn’t offer more than an 80 percent of conceiving with in vitro fertilization – inserting fertilized eggs into a woman’s uterus – in most cases wouldn’t stay open longer than a trimester.
Where did Nadya get that statistic? And it doesn’t even matter. The fact that she’s spouting it as doctrine is what makes me crazy mad, as a truth-seeking journalist and as a mom who underwent in vitro fertilization.
On Valentine’s Day 2003, I was implanted with two embryos at the University of Washington’s fertility clinic. I had begged, pleaded, cried to have the doctors please put in three eggs. I had tried to get pregnant for five years. I had miscarried. I wanted a baby and this was my one shot and I needed to up the odds.
But the docs refused. They told me that I had an 80 percent or more chance of getting pregnant with just two eggs. Well, they were right.
Peter and I had Dashiell on Nov. 6, 2003. Just one baby.
Well, it’s hard to believe that a woman like Nadya, so bent on having a huge family, would have taken her business to a clinic offering just 50 percent odds, though in doing so, she conveniently gets to set up the so-called necessity of having six embryos implanted.
If she wanted better odds, she could have come up here to Seattle. But that’s not really what she wanted. What she wanted was a litter, not a child.
After all, a woman who says “…so the most I would have ever anticipated was twins” would have butted up against any legitimate and ethical fertility clinic.
Speaking of that interview, here’s the Crazy Baby Lady:
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