Genesis Fertility Clinic Blog
searching: “fertility clinic”
January 13, 2012
Dragon Baby
The year of the Dragon in the Chinese zodiac calendar begins January 23rd. Babies born in the year of the dragon are meant to bring luck to a family and according to Chinese tradition are high-spirited, fearless and destined for success.
More Chinese women are expected to try to time their pregnancies to deliver this year. This phenomenon of astrological influence on birth rates has been noted in the past with slightly lower Asian birth rates documented in years of the tiger (headstrong and difficult) and horse (rebellious).
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January 7, 2012Building a Better Baby?
The cover of the Globe and Mail today featured an article on Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD). The article is titled Building a Better Baby.
In my opinion the article tries to create a big concern where there is a small one.
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November 1, 2011Terrible Idea
There is a sperm bank in Seattle, Washington, that is transporting its sperm from the bank to different fertility clinics by bike. Really? This is a terrible idea that raises so many questions about security, storage integrity, and confidentiality, let alone professional conduct.
The bike does look funny though….
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September 28, 2011Coenzyme Q10
At last week’s Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society (CFAS) meeting, Dr. Robert Casper, a Canadian researcher, presented a very interesting research paper. Casper’s team gave half of a group of middle-aged mice co-enzyme Q10 (CoQ10), and the other half a placebo. Next, they compared eggs retrieved from both groups of mice with eggs from young mice. The middle-aged mice that received CoQ10 had more eggs and better quality eggs than those that received a placebo. If it works in humans as it did in mice, it’s possible to slow down the effects of age on fertility.
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September 24, 2011Busy week for journalists covering fertility conference
This week the annual Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society meeting was held in Toronto. A wide range of topics were discussed, but a couple were picked up by the media as topical. One topic was the treatment, or refusal to treatment for obese infertile women. Another topic covered was the problem of too many multiple births.
The media sometimes polarizes issues, but I think we all know most of life is rarely dichotomous – most of the time there is a gray zone. My opinion?
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August 31, 2011Bear embryos
While out on a run last weekend in Whistler I nearly ran into a black bear mother and two of her cubs. Yikes. I decided to read about black bears – how to avoid being eaten by them, mostly. In my reading I came across some interesting information on bear reproduction.
Bears copulate in the spring after hibernation. Like in other mammals, sperm fertilize an egg forming an embryo. The embryo develops until the blastocyst stage of development and then becomes dormant.
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August 20, 2011Early Bird Gets the Sperm
If you are a couple trying to conceive you might enjoy this YouTube video. Click here.
It was good for a few laughs.
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July 20, 2011Grading embryos
IVF involves the creation of embryos which are then put into a woman’s uterus. Embryos start as one cell, divide and become two cells, four cells, etc. We grade embryos prior to putting them into the uterus to give us a sense of the chance a pregnancy will result.
So a high grade embryo is more likely to result in a pregnancy than a low grade, but it does not tell us about the health of the child who results. We have hundreds of healthy children from low grade embryos!
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July 12, 2011Genetic Testing in Pregnancy
Once you fall pregnant, many people want to have testing to determine whether the fetus (or fetuses) have Down syndrome, trisomy 18 or neural tube defects and other abnormalities. In BC this testing takes three main forms: Serum Integrated Prenatal Screening (SIPS), Integrated Prenatal Screening (IPS) and amniocentesis.
SIPS and IPS need a blood testing and ultrasound done very early in pregnancy, so once you are pregnant you should contact your midwife, GP or obstetrician soon to set up the testing.
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July 11, 2011Receptionists matter
On-line there are many websites dedicated to rating physicians. Some are good and some are bad. Such is life. As physicians we are used to being judged: by our college, by our peers, by our hospitals, by our university, and importantly, by our patients. But, as Genesis patients know, seeing a physician isn’t just about that one person: each of the staff members you encounter must be respectful, caring and knowledgable. It’s essential.
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June 29, 2011Get a mammogram
Just a reminder that women over the age of 40 should have a mammogram every 2 years. You don’t need a doctor’s referral and you can book the appointment yourself. The cost is covered by our provincial health plan.
For more information, see the Screening Mammography Program of BC’s website.
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June 21, 2011Mumps Alert
This week BC Medical Health Officer sent all physicians an alert about increasing rates of mumps in BC. Over the past four months there have been 77 cases of mumps – far more than typically seen in BC.
Is there a fertility/pregnancy implication? Yes. Firstly mumps can affect male fertility by damaging the cells that produce sperm, hence reducing sperm count. Secondly, mumps can increase the first of first trimester miscarriage.
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June 1, 2011One bad apple spoils the bunch
Fertility clinics and physicians faced considerable criticism after the birth of octuplets in California in 2009, when a Beverly Hills fertility doctor, Dr. Michael Kamrava, put 12 embryos into a 33 year old woman.
After the birth of the octuplets, the California Medical Board reviewed his practice, and today their decision on the fate of his practice was released. He has lost his license to practice medicine in California.
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May 14, 2011PCOS: a good thing?
Last Friday I gave a lecture on Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) to a group of family physicians. In preparing the talk I reviewed the history of the disease.
The collection of symptoms we consider PCOS in 2011 has been described for over 2 millennia: from the time of Hippocrates, medieval times, the renaissance to modern day.
Why would a disease that reduces fertility, like PCOS, persist over time?
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May 7, 2011Mother's Day
Mother’s Day brings up lots of mixed feelings for women who are infertile. I was at dinner on Thursday night with 5 girlfriends, four of them have their children because of IVF. We were talking about our plans for Mother’s Day. When I told them I am working at Genesis, two gasped and said “Genesis should be closed on Mother’s Day!” They had both struggled with infertility and found Mother’s Day the cruelest day of all.
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April 19, 2011Adoption option
Fertility treatments don’t always work and, for some people, they just aren’t “right.” Adoption is an option. Where do you start? Local? International? Private agencies? Government?
The place to start is the non-profit, parent-led BC Adoptive Families Association. You can find them at www.bcadopt.com, and they can help you navigate the adoption process.
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April 14, 2011Multiple births are risky
Today’s Vancouver Sun had an article discussing the risk of multiple births and highlighting that many of the country’s multiple births (twins, triplets, more) are due to IVF.
We sometimes put more than one embryo back in hopes of increasing a couple’s chance of successful pregnancy. The cost of this practice is that multiple births can occur.
So, we shouldn’t put more than one embryo back, right? If it was only that simple! Genesis has always lead the way in putting the fewest embryos back in young women, yet….
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April 7, 2011Antagonist supply issue
Due to an unexpected manufacturer shortage, there is currently a worldwide shortage of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) antagonist injections that are used in many IVF cycles to control the timing of ovulation.
Fortunately, we are a large IVF program and we have a considerable stock in our pharmacy, so our patients will not be affected….
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April 7, 2011New Study at Genesis
The only way we improve is by studying interventions and outcomes. This month we’ve started recruiting patients into a new study at Genesis. There have been a few small studies published since 2003 that have suggested endometrial biopsy or sampling in the menstrual cycle prior to IVF might improve pregnancy rates in patients who have have several unsuccessful IVF embryo transfers.
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March 26, 2011Fertility drug worries?
There are two types of fertility drugs: synthetic and those derived from urine. A recent study, lead by a UBC team, documented that prions can be found in urine-derived fertility drugs.
Should you worry if you have taken or will be taking these drugs? For now, no.
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March 13, 2011Known sperm donors
About once every week or so we get asked if we can help someone conceive with a known sperm donor. We can and we do.
The vast majority of our single women, lesbian couples, heterosexual couples use anonymous donor sperm from a sperm bank. Some people, however, want to use sperm from someone they know.
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March 1, 2011Global TV this week...
Global TV BC (channel 11 for those in the lower mainland) is doing a five part series this week on fertility. Every night on their 6 o’clock new hour they are doing a 5 minute segment on fertility. Last night was IVF. The rest of the week will include PGD, donor egg, funding and egg freezing.
Tune in!
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February 26, 2011First World Care
Until fertility treatments like IVF are publicly funded by our provincial medical service plan, many couples will continue to struggle to find the money to help them pay for treatments to have conceive.
When medical treatments are expensive, some look to other countries to find less expensive treatment. People go abroad for hip replacements, gall bladder surgery, cosmetic surgery and the like.
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February 26, 2011Male Fertility Blog
One excellent website, written by a urologist in California, is The Turek Clinic’s site. It’s worth reading as it authoritatively discusses the emotional and medical side of male fertility problems.
At Genesis, all five of our doctors are gynecologists with additional fellowship training in infertility. We also have urologists on staff who help with complex male fertility patients.
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January 30, 2011Scrotal Hyperthermia
The article I just finished is on laptop computers and scrotal hyperthermia. It is known that testicles function best at a temperature 2-4 ℃ less than core body temperature. If the testicles/scrotum are heated, sperm quantity and quality drops. In this study the effect of laptop computers on scrotal temperature was examined. They also examined whether a laptop shield and whether sitting with your legs together or apart (70°) influences scrotal temperature.
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January 15, 2011Laughter and IVF
A few patients sent me a link to a very funny article.
The study suggests that when a medical clown visited their clinic after embryo transfer, the IVF pregnancy rate increased. Is this a real effect?
It’s certainly tempting to follow every little study…
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January 10, 2011TED
Tonight I watched the creators of Babble.com, Rufus Griscom and Alisa Volkman, speak about four taboos of parenting. One of the taboos is that you must not talk about your miscarriage. For anyone who has miscarried, I think the message will resonate. It is a profoundly lonely and isolating experience well articulated by the speakers.
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January 9, 2011People say the darndest things
Well the holidays are behind us. For many us the holidays means spending time with friends and family we didn’t see for much of the year. If your family is like mine this usually involves talking with relatives who, like that 80s TV show, “say the darndest things.” By that I mean inappropriate comments or questions about your personal life.
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December 23, 2010Supreme court ruling December 22nd
In 2004, our federal parliament passed a law that defines which treatments and research activities are permitted in Canada with respect to human reproduction. Among other things, the law limits payment of surrogates and egg and sperm donors in Canada. As a result most couples seeking these services go to other countries.
The provinces of Quebec, Alberta, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick challenged this law saying that the regulation of health care activities like human reproduction should be the responsibility of the provincial governments. In a ruling released yesterday, the Supreme Court of Canada agreed.
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December 12, 2010Warning about fresh semen donation
Health Canada has issued a warning about fresh semen donation services that have started in Canada and around the world. The reason for the warning is that the companies providing this semen are unregulated and unaccredited. Fresh semen should NOT be used to inseminate a woman from a unknown source.
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December 2, 2010Not easily offended
I am not easily offended, I don’t raise a fuss when people butt in front of me in the grocery line and I don’t fret about politics. Indeed, I think I am fairly laid back, but when I read a recent Vancouver Sun article suggesting women have a “best-before” date of age 35 I was bugged.
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December 1, 2010Accreditation
Accreditation is a rather boring topic, I admit, but for a clinic it’s a very, very important process. In Canada fertility clinics are accredited by two main bodies: their provincial college of physicians and Accreditation Canada. We were accredited by the BC College of Physicians in 2009 and this fall underwent the rigorous Accreditation Canada inspection.
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November 27, 2010The IVF Lifecycle
Louise Brown, the first IVF conceived child, is now a healthy woman who two years ago naturally conceived and delivered her own child, Callum. This is reassuring for all involved in IVF as fertility is a marker of the health of IVF conceived children.
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November 24, 2010Sheffield, UK
IVF centres in Europe have lower pregnancy rates than those in North America. This is for a variety of reasons but largely because IVF is government funded in many countries. Even though these programs have lower per cycle IVF pregnancy rates than we do at Genesis, there are always a few tricks to take away from a clinical meeting.
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November 3, 2010CTV News - Starting November 8
CTV British Columbia News is airing a 5-part series by Mi Jung Lee on reproduction. Each night at 6pm from Monday to Friday they will be discussing surrogacy, PGD, IVF and other issues related to fertility.
Click here for the CTV ‘Making Babies’ News page.
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November 1, 2010Accessing your own records
The Excelleris company provides electronic access to patient’s laboratory results to physicians, and now patients, in BC. If you register online at My eHealth, you can access your results as soon as your physician can.
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October 26, 2010All over the news...
In my drive to work today Olivia Pratten, 28, was being interviewing on CBC Radio One. Olivia found out 5 years ago that she was conceived using donor sperm. Since then she has tried to gain access to the sperm donor’s personal and medical records.
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October 20, 2010Gulf Oil Spill
The recent British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has devastated the ecosystem and destroyed wildlife in the region. Events like this affect each of us uniquely. Many studies have examined the effect of exposure to petroleum hydrocarbons on female and male fertility.
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October 18, 2010One versus two inseminations
Patients will sometimes ask me whether two inseminations are better than one. The short answer is “no” and a meta-analysis (analysis of all of the currently published “good” studies on a topic) published in September 2010 supports this answer.
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October 5, 2010The 2010 Nobel Prize
This is an exciting week for those involved in IVF treatment. The 2010 Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to Professor Robert Edwards. Edwards, a scientist, along with Patrick Steptoe, a physician, developed the technique of IVF.
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September 27, 2010Donor Egg Information Session
On Saturday, October 2, 2010 Dr. Robert Stillman from Shady Grove Fertility will be speaking about anonymous egg donation. Shady Grove Fertility, which has locations in Maryland and Washington, DC, has one of North America’s largest donor egg programs.
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September 25, 2010Horrible
The past week has been filled with stories of families in Ottawa who have come to learn that their children where not created with the sperm they believed they were. Several patients of Dr. Bernard Norman Barwin in Ottawa, Ontario were inseminated with the husband’s sperm or anonymous donor sperm to conceive their child. They have now discovered someone else’s sperm was used. So children are not a genetic match to their fathers or their donor.
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September 21, 2010Canadian Fertility Meeting
Next week the Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society’s annual meeting is being held in Vancouver. The CFAS is the national organization of fertility doctors, nurses, laboratory scientists and other affiliated professions in the field of fertility. The CFAS establishes best practice guidelines and collects data on the practice patterns and success rates of fertility treatments, like IVF, across Canada.
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September 14, 2010A long, long time ago
Today is my birthday. So, nearly 40 years ago (I said “nearly”) today my mother was in labour. She would eventually deliver me by vaginal breech delivery. I was breech because my mother has a bicornuate uterus.
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September 1, 2010New Textbook
This month a new textbook on reproductive surgery was published. It’s editors, Drs. Gomel and Brill, are well respected physicians and surgeons in reproduction and infertility. Dr. Gomel is a mentor of mine and practiced in BC for over 30 years. He is a pioneer in IVF, laparoscopy and infertility surgery. Many, many babies have been born thanks to Dr. Gomel.
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August 30, 2010Baby Beat
A lot of people know Amy Beeman a morning radio DJ from the Beat 94.5 FM in Vancouver. She was my patient and conceived her twins by IVF. She discusses her fertility journey and recent delivery in her blog.
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August 30, 2010Baby Beat
A lot of people know Amy Beeman a morning radio DJ from the Beat 94.5 FM in Vancouver. She was my patient and conceived her twins by IVF. She discusses her fertility journey and recent delivery in her blog.
No patient confidentially is breached here – Amy mentioned that she came to Genesis and was my patient in her blog
It might be a fun read for those struggling like Amy did….
Congratulations to Amy and her husband and thanks for sharing your story!
Dr. Beth Taylor, MD, FRCSC
Reproductive Endocrinology & Infertility
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August 25, 2010Dr. Kashyap
Dr. Kashyap has started at Genesis, and has already has an introduction to Vancouver as her car was towed last night. I told her she needs to do the Grouse Grind, eat at White Spot, swim in Kits pool, take the Canada Line and walk the SeaWall. Oh, and she needs to be accosted by a squeegie kid to have had the full Vancouver introduction!
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August 24, 2010Australian Election
Australians are facing a hung parliament as their first female prime minister, Julia Gillard lost her parliamentary majority in Saturday’s election. I watched this election because of the campaign. The opposition’s campaign took issue not just with Ms. Gillard’s policies but for her lifestyle.
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August 22, 2010More on stress
For some couples the trick to conceiving is reducing stress. Of course, if you have severe endometriosis, damaged tubes, poor sperm quality or quantity, stress isn’t the whole story.
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August 3, 2010If at first you don't succeed...
A very relevant study out of the Netherlands was published in the July 2010 issue of Fertility & Sterility that assessed the time to a successful pregnancy after a miscarriage in infertile couples.
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August 1, 2010Some days are better than others
My family knows how many of my patients had positive pregnancy tests that day. No, I do not talk about patients at home, but they can tell by my mood. If most of my patient’s pregnancy tests that day were positive I am in a good mood.
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July 20, 2010Quebec IVF Funding
As of August 5, 2010 the Quebec Provincial Health Plan will cover the cost, including medications, of three IVF cycles. There remains much to be sorted out, for example whether there will be an age limit, whether additional IVF cycles will be funded if a child is born from IVF, how will a wait list be managed?
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July 10, 2010New Doctor Joining Genesis!
Dr. Sonya Kashyap is joining Genesis! She will be the fifth member of the physician team. To say I am excited that she is coming is an understatement. Dr. Kashyup is energetic, well educated, kind and experienced. She has already published more research papers than most REIs publish in their careers.
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July 5, 2010Home inseminations
Two patients in one day is not a pattern. It might just be a fluke, but it does make me wonder. Today two of my patients had a positive pregnancy test who had been trying to conceive with a known donor at home for at least a year. Single women, women whose husband’s have poor or no sperm, and lesbians will sometimes use sperm from men the know, at home, to conceive. We call the men “known donors.”
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July 3, 2010Health and relationships
With the HST, school-board funding cuts, and numerous other political bad news stories many of us are disillusioned with government these days. There is a small good news story, however. The provincial government is introducing a new initiative that focuses on the relationship between health care providers (e.g. family doctors) and patients.
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May 30, 2010Lubricants
Olive oil, KY Jelly®, saliva, baby oil, FemGlide®, Astroglide®, Replens® are commonly used sexual lubricants and have all been shown to reduce sperm motility and thereby reduce fertility. All should be avoided by couples trying to conceive.
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May 16, 2010Infertility Awareness Week
May 16th to 22nd is Canadian Infertility Awareness Week. There are several events to raise awareness of infertility, including a webcast and public forum here in Vancouver.
The Infertility Awareness Association of Canada’s (IAAC) website is a valuable resource for information about this important week and infertility issues in Canada.
I am speaking at a public forum along with IAAC’s Executive Director Beverly Hanck, Lorne Brown, a Chinese Medicine specialist, and Sue Dumais, a mind-body specialist, about infertility on Wednesday, May 19th. The event is at the Vancouver Public Library, downtown from 6:30 to 9:00pm. It’s free to attend and will be webcast. More information is available at the Family Passages website.
Raising awareness can help couples access care, help remove the stigma of infertility, and promote infertility as an important disease to government.
Dr. Beth Taylor, MD, FRCSC
Reproductive Endocrinology & Infertility