At Delhi IVF we absolutely respect your moral beliefs. Because of this, we have taken the care to devise acceptable assisted conception programs for virtually all faiths – Christianity (including the ‘Brethren’), Islamic, Jewish (including supervised Kosher treatment cycles), Hindu and Buddhist. We guarantee that your egg and your sperm will never be used in a way that you have not explicitly or implicitly consented to.

When does life start?

There are many views on the moment that represents the beginning of a new life. Some people believe that it is the instant that the sperm enters the egg, for others it is the moment that the genetic material of the two parents come together (this happens some time after fertilization and is called syngamy), while others again place it at certain developmental milestones of the embryo or fetus, such as implantation, nervous system development or “sentience”.

Because of these questions, some people face a moral dilemma when considering cryostorage (freezing) of embryos after an IVF cycle. Embryos are often cryostored if there are more produced than are necessary for a single embryo transfer. It enables a number of embryo transfers while stimulating the ovaries with hormones only once.

For many people, this option is very attractive, since it is the ovarian stimulation that is the most expensive and complicated part of an IVF cycle. But it does mean that there are often embryos produced that will never be transferred. For some people this is not a morally acceptable situation.

Syngamy

Syngamy literally means “married together” and is the moment when the genetic material from the egg and the sperm join to become one. It occurs in the fertilized egg about 20 hours after the sperm has entered. A few hours before syngamy the sperm’s chromosomes and the egg’s chromosomes are visible as separate ‘spheres’ (or vacuoles) called pronuclei.

At this stage

	we know the egg has been successfully fertilized

	the male and female genetic material have not yet combined

	the zygote (as it’s called) can be transferred to the fallopian tube (by
	laparoscopy or vaginally, by ultrasound-guided catheter)

	the fertilized, pre-syngamy egg can be ‘frozen’ (cryostored) for a later
	decision on its transfer or dissolution (i.e. allowing it to dissolve away).

What are the special options and alternatives?

	To provide sperm without masturbation, semen can be collected in a non-
	sperm-toxic silastic condom during sexual intercourse. These special condoms are available from Sydney IVF.

	To avoid any manipulation of eggs outside the body, consider IUI intrauterine
	insemination of prepared sperm at ovulation, which can be stimulated to
	produce multiple follicles (although with a chance of high multiple pregnancy,
	such as triplets).

	To avoid fertilization outside the body, consider GIFT – gamete intrafallopian transfer, in which unfertilized eggs are transferred with separate sperm into the fallopian tube at laparoscopy.

	To avoid producing more eggs than will be used, consider natural cycle IVF (without ovarian stimulation, but with in vitro fertilization).

	To avoid producing more fertilized eggs than will be used, we can fertilize just two or three recovered eggs after stimulation.

	To avoid producing more embryos than will be used yet still have the medical
	benefit of freezing fertilized eggs that have not yet become embryos, we can
	can freeze extra fertilized eggs before syngamy.