WE KNOW HOW, BUT DON'T ASK US WHY A survey of U.S. fertility clinics published last week found that few have policies for deciding whom to help get pregnant -- an issue drawing attention in light of recent news reports about women giving birth in their fifties and sixties.
Eighty percent of clinics had patients meet with financial coordinators, but only 18 percent had them see a social worker or psychologist.
"Assisted reproductive technologies are too driven by the desires of couples and not enough by the interests of children," said Arthur Caplan, bioethics chairman at the University of Pennsylvania and an author of the survey, whose results were published in the journal Fertility and Sterility.
Most clinics surveyed said they'd help a 43-year-old get pregnant. One in five would refuse single women, but 5 percent don't ask about marital status. One in four would help a woman with HIV.
THAT TIME OF THE MONTH Deaths related to medication errors appear to rise sharply during the first few days of each month, suggesting that hectic pharmacies may be at least partly to blame, according to researchers.
Their study of U.S. death certificates from 1979 through 2000 found that deaths attributed to prescription-drug errors showed a 25 percent spike in the first week of each month compared with the last week of the month. The report appears in the January issue of Pharmacotherapy.
Other research has documented a glut of prescription medication purchases at the beginning of each month, when government checks to the elderly and poor are delivered.
-- News Services and Staff Reports
