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American Morning

What a Concept!

Aired July 25, 2003 - 08:38   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: In vitro fertilization has come a long way since its introduction a quarter century ago. Worldwide, more than a million babies have been born using the technique.
Dr. Alan Copperman is the director of reproductive medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital right here in New York City.

Thanks for joining us.

Let's go back to that year, because in retrospect, what was done, egg, sperm, combined in a petri dish, reimplanted in the mother, sort of simple. But at that time, utterly groundbreaking. How was it for the medical community?

DR. ALAN COPPERMAN, DIR. REPRODUCTIVE MEDICINE, MT. SINAI HOSPITAL: I think everybody was worried. Everybody -- this was groundbreaking technology. It hadn't been done before in humans. Though the animal veterinarians and animal research had been doing this for years. But I think we were all anxious to see that the babies coming out were going to be normal. And fortunately that is exactly what we have found.

O'BRIEN: Much debate among nondoctors, as well in the community. Many people thought that Louise Brown would turn out to be a little monster, in some way, shape or form, deformed, something wrong with her.

COPPERMAN: There was a media circus. There were many groups with many different agendas. But I think that just doing this cautiously, keeping careful track of the births, has really given hope to a lot of people that haven't conceived that they can use this technology and they can have a great outcome and a healthy family.

O'BRIEN: Today, of course, there's this tremendous acceptance of IVF. Does it surprise you that 1 percent of all babies born are born through IVF?

COPPERMAN: I think that number has increased dramatically over the years as the success of IVF has increased. So it may be even higher in the next five to 10 years.

O'BRIEN: The technique obviously has improved greatly, and Sanjay sort of hinted to some of that in his piece. What specifically has gotten better and less risky in the technique?

COPPERMAN: Well, 25 years ago, the chance of success was one in the first 30 or 40 tries. Now, the best centers are getting almost half of women pregnant. Years ago we used to have to put in tons of embryos, three, four, five, six embryos, just to achieve a pregnancy. Now our biggest problem is high order multiple gestations.

O'BRIEN: Which if you're not a doctor, higher order multiple gestation.

COPPERMAN: Triplets, quintuplets. Now we're just trying to put one or two embryos to make sure that we don't have those problems.

O'BRIEN: Of course a mother who has triplets, or twins even or quadruplets, that's a big risk to the mother, also a risk to the fetus, as well. Is that the big challenge for IVF, limiting those numbers, and what's being done in that regard?

COPPERMAN: That's exactly the challenge. I think that the risk to the mother of having three or four fetuses includes diabetes, and bedrest for months and months, and to the babies the risks of prematurity include just about every organ system being at risk. So what we're doing now instead of putting back embryos earlier, after two or three days in a culture dish, we're able to culture them out longer, four or five days, to figure out who the best embryos are and only put back that best two embryo.

O'BRIEN: Louise Brown's mother had blocked fallopian tubes, but otherwise perfectly healthy. Her body could host a baby. Are you seeing improvements across the board for women who have more problems than just blocked fallopian tubes?

COPPERMAN: Sure. The only indication 25 years ago was tubal disease. Now we're doing in vitro fertilization for unexplained infertility, for endometreosis. We've nearly cured male factor infertility by doing a procedure called IKSI (ph). We take a single sperm in a guy that doesn't have very many sperm and put it right into the egg, and we're able to overcome male infertility in just about all cases. We're even using in vitro fertilization for genetic diseases, when both parents are at risk of a specific disorder, in which we're able to take an embryo, pluck off one of the cells, analyze it, and if that embryo is healthy, put it into the woman, and if it's not, then we don't use that embryo.

O'BRIEN: It's amazing, especially if you look back at how new it was 25 years ago.

Dr. Alan Copperman, nice to see you. Thanks for joining us this morning.

COPPERMAN: Thank you.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired July 25, 2003 - 08:38   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: In vitro fertilization has come a long way since its introduction a quarter century ago. Worldwide, more than a million babies have been born using the technique.
Dr. Alan Copperman is the director of reproductive medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital right here in New York City.

Thanks for joining us.

Let's go back to that year, because in retrospect, what was done, egg, sperm, combined in a petri dish, reimplanted in the mother, sort of simple. But at that time, utterly groundbreaking. How was it for the medical community?

DR. ALAN COPPERMAN, DIR. REPRODUCTIVE MEDICINE, MT. SINAI HOSPITAL: I think everybody was worried. Everybody -- this was groundbreaking technology. It hadn't been done before in humans. Though the animal veterinarians and animal research had been doing this for years. But I think we were all anxious to see that the babies coming out were going to be normal. And fortunately that is exactly what we have found.

O'BRIEN: Much debate among nondoctors, as well in the community. Many people thought that Louise Brown would turn out to be a little monster, in some way, shape or form, deformed, something wrong with her.

COPPERMAN: There was a media circus. There were many groups with many different agendas. But I think that just doing this cautiously, keeping careful track of the births, has really given hope to a lot of people that haven't conceived that they can use this technology and they can have a great outcome and a healthy family.

O'BRIEN: Today, of course, there's this tremendous acceptance of IVF. Does it surprise you that 1 percent of all babies born are born through IVF?

COPPERMAN: I think that number has increased dramatically over the years as the success of IVF has increased. So it may be even higher in the next five to 10 years.

O'BRIEN: The technique obviously has improved greatly, and Sanjay sort of hinted to some of that in his piece. What specifically has gotten better and less risky in the technique?

COPPERMAN: Well, 25 years ago, the chance of success was one in the first 30 or 40 tries. Now, the best centers are getting almost half of women pregnant. Years ago we used to have to put in tons of embryos, three, four, five, six embryos, just to achieve a pregnancy. Now our biggest problem is high order multiple gestations.

O'BRIEN: Which if you're not a doctor, higher order multiple gestation.

COPPERMAN: Triplets, quintuplets. Now we're just trying to put one or two embryos to make sure that we don't have those problems.

O'BRIEN: Of course a mother who has triplets, or twins even or quadruplets, that's a big risk to the mother, also a risk to the fetus, as well. Is that the big challenge for IVF, limiting those numbers, and what's being done in that regard?

COPPERMAN: That's exactly the challenge. I think that the risk to the mother of having three or four fetuses includes diabetes, and bedrest for months and months, and to the babies the risks of prematurity include just about every organ system being at risk. So what we're doing now instead of putting back embryos earlier, after two or three days in a culture dish, we're able to culture them out longer, four or five days, to figure out who the best embryos are and only put back that best two embryo.

O'BRIEN: Louise Brown's mother had blocked fallopian tubes, but otherwise perfectly healthy. Her body could host a baby. Are you seeing improvements across the board for women who have more problems than just blocked fallopian tubes?

COPPERMAN: Sure. The only indication 25 years ago was tubal disease. Now we're doing in vitro fertilization for unexplained infertility, for endometreosis. We've nearly cured male factor infertility by doing a procedure called IKSI (ph). We take a single sperm in a guy that doesn't have very many sperm and put it right into the egg, and we're able to overcome male infertility in just about all cases. We're even using in vitro fertilization for genetic diseases, when both parents are at risk of a specific disorder, in which we're able to take an embryo, pluck off one of the cells, analyze it, and if that embryo is healthy, put it into the woman, and if it's not, then we don't use that embryo.

O'BRIEN: It's amazing, especially if you look back at how new it was 25 years ago.

Dr. Alan Copperman, nice to see you. Thanks for joining us this morning.

COPPERMAN: Thank you.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com