Desperate patients in their late 40s and early 50s are paying upwards of $30,000 to combine their genetic material with donor egg mitochondria in nations like Mexico and the Bahamas. Medical tourism companies steer these clients overseas despite explicit opposition from established professional medical organizations regarding the technique's use for general fertility. An eight-month investigation revealed significant red flags across partner clinics, including shoddy record-keeping and an ancestry test that raised questions about a child's true biological parentage. Consequently, severe reporting lapses leave the total number of children produced by this unvetted technology completely unkno…
Key points
Professional medical organizations oppose using three-parent IVF as an age-related fertil…: Professional medical organizations oppose using three-parent IVF as an age-related fertility treatment due to a lack of peer-reviewed safety and efficacy data.
Federal regulations make the mitochondrial replacement procedure illegal within the Unite…: Federal regulations make the mitochondrial replacement procedure illegal within the United States, driving a secretive international medical tourism pipeline.
Widespread secrecy and incomplete clinic tracking have made it impossible to determine ho…: Widespread secrecy and incomplete clinic tracking have made it impossible to determine how many children have been born through these controversial methods.
Sources checked by our analysis pipeline: 1
Highlights
A pioneering IVF technique developed to reduce the risk of children inheriting sometimes-fatal mitochondrial diseases from their mothers is being marketed online as a fertility procedure for older women, despite scant evidence it works.
The procedure, popularly called “three-parent IVF,” is illegal in the United States, but an Illinois-based company has facilitated a sprawling for-profit tourism industry, connecting women in the U.S. and Europe to clinics abroad.
STAT’s investigation found examples of shoddy record keeping by a clinic providing the procedure, incomplete data published in marginal journals, and in one case, a puzzling ancestry test result that called into question the source of a child’s DNA.
TIRANA, Albania — As you drive from the Tirana International Airport toward the heart of the Albanian capital, car dealerships and shopping center-lined freeways give way to tidy rows of Communist-era housing blocks, their concrete walls splashed in Funfetti-hued dazzle camo — reminders of the country’s darker periods hiding beneath a cheerful riot of cheap paint. Continue south and on your right, freshly laid roads snake up into hills dotted with luxury homes…
The fatal confrontation unfolded during a family holiday where 29-year-old tourist Ng Jing Kai had planned to propose to his girlfriend. After their rental car was broken into, Ng tracked an electronic locator tag to pursue a cyclist suspected of theft using a large multi-purpose vehicle. The judge emphasized that the lethal decision to chase the e-bike rider over a kerb carried catastrophic risks that ultimately cost a life.
As part of his campaign to lead the global health agency, Budi Gunadi Sadikin is urging member states to overhaul the organization's reliance on voluntary donations. The Indonesian health minister warns that the agency remains unready for future outbreaks and must stabilize its finances following the United States' departure. His platform centers on securing financial self-reliance and improving healthcare support for low-income nations facing ongoing health crises.
Driven by social media influencer campaigns, consumers are increasingly asking dental professionals about hydroxyapatite, a calcium phosphate mineral marketed as an enamel-strengthening alternative. This surge in interest coincides with heightened public skepticism over traditional water fluoridation and dental products. Nevertheless, leading health organizations and dental researchers continue to endorse conventional fluoride as a proven defense against tooth decay.