LONDON, April 14, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Another victim has died two days after beginning in vitro fertilization treatment, due to the allegedly rare side effect associated with in vitro fertilization treatments known as Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome (OHSS).
Temilola Akinbolagbe, 33, collapsed at a bus stop – she was disconnected from life support five days later, after reportedly suffering a massive heart attack. The heart attack followed after a blood clot formed, associated with the hormonal treatments used to stimulate egg maturation. Doctors say the potentially fatal form of OHSS occurs in one percent of women, although a less severe form of the condition affects as many as 20 percent of women undergoing in vitro treatments.
Following an inquest, Akinbolagbe’s death was ruled “medical misadventure.” Akinbolagbe isn’t the first casualty of IVF – Jacqueline Rushton, a 32 year-old Dublin woman, died last year as the result of Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome arising as a complication of OHSS.
The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported a death from intra-cranial hemorrhage (a type of stroke) in a woman following IVF-induced OHSS, in 1996. A Medline search revealed that a death also occurred in New Zealand in 1995 resulting from an OHSS-triggered blood clot to the brain. Two cases of non-fatal stroke were also reported, with both women left with paralysis, following IVF treatment. Two heart attacks are reported in the literature, as were 20 cases of thrombosis (a life-threatening blood clot) of the internal jugular vein in the Medline search results. The formation of blood clots is a major cause of strokes and heart attacks. One such blood clot resulted in the necessary amputation of a woman’s forearm.
Dr. Dianne N. Irving, a graduate of The Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University, has warned numerous panels of scientists and politicians for many years that the practices of most fertility treatments are unethical, dangerous to women and children and amount to the use of patients, without their consent, as human test subjects.
IVF results in a higher rate of miscarriage than regular pregnancies, at eight percent of established pregnancies, and that “ectopic pregnancies are regular occurrences.” Risk of premature births are also much greater, especially for multiple babies. Fifteen case reports of ascites, a dangerous retention of fluid within the abdomen, have been reported. In most cases, several litres of fluid had to be drained surgically. Fluid retention was also reportedly the reason why one woman went into shock, a second developed pleurisy, an acute inflammation of the lung, and three others had potentially fatal hydrothorax, or water on the lung.
Two cases of liver failure resulting from IVF treatments have been detailed. Adult respiratory distress syndrome was also reported. A study from France revealed a significantly increased trend for women undergoing IVF to require hospitalization for ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome. In addition, an Israeli study warned that IVF caused “Increased rates of perinatal mortality [death of baby] and morbidity resulting from prematurity, and higher rates of maternal diseases in pregnancy (preeclampsia, diabetes mellitus, bleeding, anemia) contributing to fetal intra-uterine growth restriction and maternal morbidity [death of mother].”
Pope John Paul II described IVF as “a technology that wants to substitute true paternity and maternity and therefore that does harm to the dignity of parents and children alike.”
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
UK Fertility Specialist Warns Women are Being Experimented on With IVF
Irish Woman Dies as a Result of In Vitro Fertilization Treatment
Pope Denounces In Vitro Fertilization
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