You weren’t infertile
Six children you had
Destroying your eggs
Was making you sad
Your doctor injected
The eggs that remained
They wouldn’t be frozen
And self-contained
A seventh child
You strongly desired
Without a husband
It wasn’t required
Your seventh child
Was never alone
Seven siblings
With him had grown
To care for these babies
Will cost quite a lot
You're not concerned
No income you’ve got
You said your children
Have filled a void
But most outsiders
Are quite annoyed
A litter of babies
Women shouldn’t carry
The health of each baby
Is very scary
You went to a doctor
Who should be blamed
For getting you pregnant
He should be ashamed
By, Randee Saber 2/25/09
Octuplet mom and doctor benefited from alliance
By GILLIAN FLACCUS – 4 days ago
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Long before she gave birth to her octuplets, Nadya Suleman delivered for her fertility specialist.
Like clockwork, she had babies every year but one between 2001 and 2006. The six children she had during that period accounted for a big share of the success stories at Dr. Michael Kamrava's clinic. And Kamrava touted his feats with Suleman on the local news.
But that track record — together with the birth of the octuplets on Jan. 26 — has raised eyebrows among doctors and ethicists who wonder whether Kamrava disregarded professional standards and used Suleman to boost his stats and improve his standing in the highly competitive and lucrative field.
"from The Associated Press seeking comment.
Suleman, a 33-year-old unemployed single mother, has said Kamrava implanted her with six embryos for each of her six pregnancies — an apparent violation of national guidelines that specify no more than two embryos for a healthy woman under 35. In her last pregnancy, two of the six embryos split to create eight babies.
Reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that between 2000 and 2006, Suleman's children accounted for five out of 24 live births to women under 35 who underwent the same procedure at Kamrava's clinic. (She had six children in all during that period, including a set of twins, which are counted as one live birth in CDC data.) The figures do not include 2005, when Kamrava did not file with the CDC.
During that same period, no more than one in five fertility cycles at Kamrava's clinic in any given year resulted in a live birth for women under 35 using fresh embryos and their own eggs. The national average for U.S. fertility clinics in 2006, the most recent year reported, was about 30 percent.
In 2006, when Suleman was pregnant with the twins, she was featured with Kamrava in a KTLA-TV news story about an embryo implantation procedure he pioneered that he claimed could boost pregnancy rates by 70 percent. The controversial technique buries the embryos in the uterine lining.
A high success rate could turn heads in the highly competitive field, where doctors keep close tabs on their standings in clinic-by-clinic statistics. That pressure is magnified in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, where there are many high-volume clinics, said Dr. Hal Danzer, of the Southern California Reproductive Center.
"You look at what everybody else is doing across the country and if everybody is doing better than you do, you start looking at your lab," Danzer said.
The field is also lucrative: In vitro fertilizations can cost up to $15,000 per cycle, and many patients undergo multiple cycles.
He also noted that fertility specialists come under pressure from their patients.
"By Suleman's own account, that may have happened in her case.
Suleman was in her early 20s and had had several failed pregnancies when she first underwent in vitro fertilization with Kamrava in 2000. On the first try with Kamrava, Suleman became pregnant and gave birth to a son in 2001. Thirteen months later, she delivered a daughter and went back for a third try a few months later, she said.
"At that point, the doctor's like 'You're the only person who's come back more than twice,'" she said on NBC's "Today." Suleman said she was able to persuade her doctor to implant more embryos because "he knew I wanted a big family and this is my only option."
Associated Press Writer Alicia Chang in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
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