"Secure Your Fertility Future With Confidence and Peace of Mind!"

"The advertising is coming across so strongly, and not providing any kind of real data about what success means and what the risks are."

"I think the industry is very effective at creating this perceived sense of control, and marketing of the technology is such that ... to be a good woman, this is something that you should do." 

"The entirety of egg freezing was generated as a business -- it is intended to bring in revenue."

"You have to be inherently skeptical of a medical technology that has that foundation." 

Kathleen Hammond, associate professor, Lincoln Alexander School of Law, Toronto Metropolitan University 

 

"There is a distinct difference between promotion and education."

"[Oversight of clinics' marketing by federal and provincial regulators could]  play a role in supporting accurate and responsible communication [and help ensure information is] evidence-based and not misleading."

Emily McIntosh, executive director, Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society (CFAS)  

Of the 4.1 million babies born in Canada between 2013 and 2023, just 70 are known to have come from frozen eggs, according to data from the Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society (CFAS). PHOTO BY PEXELS.

In Canada, the egg-freezing industry more than doubled from 2020 to 2024, according to data from the Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society. Of course there is also the sobering reality that this business is not the sure-fire answer to the dilemma faced by women as they exit their prime child-bearing years and still hope that they will at some time in the near future bear a child through a successful pregnancy, at the same time that they're aware that healthy baby outcomes are more assured when the mother is still young and pregnancy is more biologically approachable.

 

So that, despite the 4.1 million babies that entered life in Canada during that time frame a mere 70 were the result of frozen eggs is telling. The reason that is so, according to industry insiders, is lower survival rates for eggs through freezing, thawing, fertilization and implantation stages (this is not nature's design but one devised by human ingenuity). An additional fact; women who have committed to this elective procedure have not yet reached the point of drawing upon it, and many likely never will. 

 

The Investigative Journalism Bureau out of the University of Toronto has much to say about the absence of adequate government oversight leaving many private fertility clinics free to make use of aggressive marketing techniques whose actual purpose is the exploitation of women's feelings of insecurity and yearning for motherhood at some 'appropriate' time in their lives. The IJB identified a number of concerns over the industry related to misleading advertising, emotional manipulation, withheld opaque results, and accompanying financial cupidity. 

 

Catherine J. Lalonde, shown after her egg retrieval procedure in 2022. Of the seven eggs collected, only three survived the freezing process and none developed into viable embryos. SUPPLIED.

 

While there is no government record of the total number of fertility clinics operating throughout Canada, the IJB reporters analyzed the social media accounts and websites of 42 clinics with 110 storefront locations in seven provinces; three affiliated with public hospitals, 19 physician-owned, 17 with ties to private equity firms' ownership or through investments. Of the total, 35 were judged to produce misleading or overstated claims, leaving the impression that women opting into their programs could plan ahead with a certainty of success; while in reality only 25 percent of embryos from frozen eggs, transferred to wombs between 2013 and 2023 in Canada led to a live birth. Consistent with international data. 

• OriginElle Fertility, Montreal ... "Thanks to #eggfreezing, you can preserve your eggs for later use and have more control over your #fertility";
• NewLife Fertility, Ontario ... Women can look forward to "No pressure. No rush, Just options. Your body, your choice, your future";
• Evolve, Toronto ... Through egg freezing women can delay or hit the snooze button" on parenthood;
• Pacific Centre for Reproductive Medicine Vancouver/Edmonton ... "One day you'll be staring at the miracle you used to dream about";
• Anova Fertility... "Egg freezing is helping more Canadians take charge of their future family plans". 



An independent government body is needed to regulate the fertility industry and ensure women get accurate information.  Getty Images

The process leading to egg freezing includes daily hormone doses to stimulate the ovaries in the production of multiple eggs, then harvested and frozen for hoped-for fertilization and implantation in the uterus at some future date, for the potential of a successful pregnancy. A single cycle can cost  up to $20,000. Patients must undergo weeks of self-administering medications. Going through this onerous process will not guarantee frozen eggs will at some point lead to a live, breathing baby. 

 

According to CFAS, an estimated $120 million was spent by Canadians in the decade 2013 to 2023 on 6,242 egg-freezing retrievals whereby 65,517 eggs were preserved. Most of which owners have not yet begun the process of having them fertilized and implanted. A 2025 study from University of California, Los Angeles, found between 2014 and 2016 a mere 5.7 percent of women in the U.S. made use of their eggs within five to seven years; low uptake seems universal.

 

Frozen eggs must be processed through steps that by their very nature many frozen eggs will not survive; some 80 to 90 percent thaw successfully; roughly 70 to 80 succeed in sperm fertilization, then the trial of embryo development and potential live birth leads to further survival rate declines, according to the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada practise guidelines.  Fewer than four percent of eggs frozen in Canada from 2013 to 2023 went through thawing for fertilization. 

 

Sarah Attia and her husband spent more than $100,000 on fertility treatments. Toronto Life

 

 

No Scruples, Big Price, It's All Yours

"IVF clinics have had pretty free rein, and some would look at their pathway as being a bit free and easy in terms of new developments. [U.S. clinics have] a bit of a reputation of being cowboys."
"They help a lot of people ... and that's largely a good thing. But one might wonder if there is a need for more oversight than we currently have."
National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins

New Hope Fertility Center

Through a process known as preimplantation, genetic diagnosis, or PGD, gender selection has become a possible choice where clinicians remove a single cell or a few cells from an embryo to use DNA probes for the purpose of examining its genetic makeup. PGD typically is used to screen embryos for the presence of inherited diseases, but the procedure can be used as well to identify embryos with desirable characteristics. PGD assists parents-to-be in selecting which embryos to transfer to the womb, which to discard, without altering the embryo.

This new science of expendable embryos failed to impress religious conservatives believing that conception equals new life's beginning. A panel in Britain to study assisted reproduction suggested that a public body be established to oversee human embryo research, regulate fertility clinics and lead debates revolving about new technologies, to which Britain's Parliament concurred, establishing the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority, the first such of its kind -- that other countries eventually emulated.

In the United States, instead of supporting research and government regulation a 1995 provision to an appropriations bill prohibited the expenditure of federal funds for any research involving the creation or destruction of human embryos so lawmakers whose ethics and politics preferred to skirt the issue could vote against public funding for such research at the same time that the private sphere picked up the embryo research ball. While in Britain a practical approach was taken to the inevitable ensuring that government would have the last word in protecting the public interest.

In the U.S. the Food and Drug Administration sent a warning letter in 2017 to Dr. John Zhang who experimented with mitochondria technology whose purpose was to aid older women with degraded eggs. That warning from the FDA chilled any such research for which Britain in the same year formally licensed the process for women with heritable diseases. India last year banned commercial surrogacy and Ireland is preparing to join the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Finland, New Zealand and others to prohibit anonymous sperm donation.

Other countries like China, Canada and Australia ban gender selection other than in rare instances of medical need, a situation where, ten years earlier the U.S. was also seized with the moral aspect of such procedures. Currently as many countries impose boundaries on assisted reproduction, no such hesitation exists in the U.S. fertility industry which remains for the most part unregulated, routinely offering services elsewhere outlawed. Making the U.S. a popular destination for IVF patients from all corners of the world.

Commercial surrogacy, anonymous sperm donation and screening for physical characteristics, along with sex selection are freely available, with the fertility industry in the United States valued at $5.8 billion in 2018. The Chinese researcher who created the world's first gene-edited infants which last month caused a stir worldwide, had his training in the United States. NIH Director Collins was clear in condemning the gene-editing as an "epic scientific misadventure". It seem the Chinese government may agree if for no other reason than embarrassment, since Dr. He has since been placed under investigation.

Fertility specialist Dr. Jeffrey Steinberg in Encino California was accused of practising eugenics, offering parents the choice of gender, eye, skin and hair colour. He added gender screening to his IVF clinic at a time when it simply wasn't done. In the years since, IVF clinics across the U.S. routinely now offer such screening as a standard service. Close to 73 percent of U.S. fertility clinics offer gender selection, according to a survey published in the Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics.

Couples without fertility problems but who choose IVF to enable them to control the outcome of their pregnancies are offered gender selection. Thousands of patients yearly are sent to IVF clinics in the U.S. from Australia where such interventions are illegal. Dr. Steinberg speaks of parents now requesting even greater access to 'designing' outcomes. Eye colour is a popular choice with a 60 percent success rate, where most prospective parents want a blue-eyed or green-eyed baby.

"People call up asking for all kinds of things: vocal ability, athletic ability. Height is a big one. I have a lot of patients who want tall children", he remarked. "If  you do what I do, you can't have a strong ethical opinion [other than when parents ask for] something that is going to be harmful."

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