Fertility clinics receive no government funding, so the women who use them are not covered by federal laws that protect human subjects in research. And although doctors in all types of medicine have the prerogative to try novel techniques that may help their patients, reproductive technology is evolving so fast that the line between cutting-edge medicine and using women as guinea pigs is no longer clear, observers say. We require all of that for non-human animals, but not for people. The scope of the problem remains unknown, since there is no system of oversight. But more than 1,000 women undergo in vitro fertilization procedures every week in this country, and countless others receive other kinds of fertility treatments.
Fertility doctors say they are just trying to give women the best odds of getting pregnant.
Patients want nothing less than the latest technology, they say, even if it is still experimental. And, they argue, since the federal government has decided not to fund fertility research, it is up to the private sector to conduct that work. The Washington Post McBain's ovarian preservation procedure is a case in point of how difficult it can be to tell the difference between modern reproductive medicine and unregulated human research. Kent College of Law. Equally important, he said, is the sense of empowerment a cancer patient can gain from trying something experimental.