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In 1992, Congress passed a law to help protect in vitro fertilization patients after a series of scandals. It created a new metric – known as success rates – aimed at helping patients make more informed decisions.
Our reporting found that the law isn’t having its intended effect – and is driving bad practices.
Given the shortcomings of consumer protections, here are three ideas that could help fix the problems we found:
- Improve the way the CDC handles fertility data
Federal law requires the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to gather a range of data on every IVF cycle, including information that is useful for understanding clinic practices. This includes cycles that resulted in very premature births, and the number of times that a patient experienced an infection or a potentially serious complication known as severe ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome.
However, the CDC currently withholds this type of detailed data from the public.
The CDC told Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting that it could not release this information due to an “assurance of confidentiality” agreement aimed at increasing clinic participation...