Los Angeles Times
February 14, 2009 By:
Alan Zarembo
Concerning the recent California octuplet births Dr. Greiss shared his opinion recently with Alan Zarembo of the Los Angeles Times:
Some doctors operate under the principle that the customer is usually right.
"The sole custodian for the embryos are the father and mother," said Dr. Hisham Greiss of the Midwest Fertility Center in Downers Grove, Ill. "If she is on the table and says put them all in, I have no choice."
Greiss said he especially sympathizes with patients who have mortgaged their homes to pay for the procedure and want to transfer more embryos to increase their odds of success on the first attempt.
"This is the dilemma," he said. "We always have this problem."
When he can't dissuade patients, Greiss has them sign a waiver accepting the risks.
For his patients under 35 in 2006, four of his clinic's 29 births were triplets -- a rate nearly seven times the national average. Greiss said all four mothers were patients with low odds of conceiving. Each had insisted on three embryos, and they all took.
"I consider a triplet birth a failure," he said.
