In China, there are 230 million married couples at productive age and infertility rate for these families is 5-10%. In other words, about 10 million families have fertility problems. For some, their problems can be cured with properly medical treatment, and 1-2% of these couples can have their babies through In Vitro Fertilization technology (IVF), or having test tube babies. For the rest of them, however, their infertility problem can not be resolved with current medical technology.
In Shandong province, several medical institutions that provide Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) are often crowded with people. The IVF technology usually costs 20,000 yuan. For these grassroots medical institutions that do not have comprehensive medical resources, such as women and children's health care centers, family planning committees, and private clinics, providing IVF technology to patients is quite profitable.
Compared with other technologies, Artificial Insemination (AI) technology is simple to operate. In Shandong, there are over one hundred medical institutions that provide this service. In large hospitals, operation cost for receiving AI is around 400 yuan. For some small hospitals, they are willing to do the operation at 100-200 yuan.
"Misusing the ART, humans seem to be playing a game with God and their fate. If humans continue to do so, it will lead to a series of problems such as the degradation of national physical quality, increase of hereditary disease, and ethical problems," said Chen Zijiang, director of the Genesiology Center under the Shandong Provincial Hospital.
A staff member from the Shandong Health Bureau said that it was imperative to work out some rules to constrain the use of the ART technology, since the technology required qualified medical personnel to implement, and the application of such technology is linked with social, ethnical, moral and legal issues. Although the Ministry of Health has ready made related rules to standardize the use of the ART, these rules are difficult to be implemented at the grassroots level.
(Chinanews.cn August 7, 2006)
