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Comment by golemotron | Hacker News Reader

> Similarly, Noyes’ team, surveying 183 egg-freezing patients on why they were delaying childbirth, found that just 24 percent cited professional reasons, while 88 percent cited lack of a partner.

Are they more likely to find a partner as they get older? That bet could be as large as a bet on the viability of the frozen eggs. Finding a partner and raising a child on one's own both become harder as time goes on. My bet is that most eggs frozen will by younger women for themselves later in life will not be used.

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I feel like I'm uniquely qualified to comment on this, as I'm going through the IVF process with my wife currently.

> Are they more likely to find a partner as they get older?

Possibly. Maybe not, but you're essentially paying for insurance.

> That bet could be as large as a bet on the viability of the frozen eggs.

Frozen embryos are extremely viable, as long as you were able to observe their cellular division 3-5 days after fertilization. As long as you can confirm they're viable before freezing, you're almost assured they'll be viable when thawed at a later data in the future (this isn't only from my pubmed research, but also from the top fertility doctor in the Chicagoland area we're using).

> Finding a partner and raising a child on one's own both become harder as time goes on.

Disagree. In most cases, you're further advanced in your career when older, giving you more income, thereby more purchasing power. You may not find a partner, but daycare is easier to afford, or a part time nanny. Delaying childbirth most likely affords you opportunities not available to those who cut their career prospects early to have children (or who left their career entirely because they had a partner to rely on).

Also, more resources available to you means you can be more discerning about your partner selection.

> My bet is that most eggs frozen will by younger women for themselves later in life will not be used.

Its possible, but like I said above, its insurance. My wife is 30. Whatever eggs we freeze now that we don't use, they are essentially her eggs at 30, and could be used by her at any date in the future. She even has the option to use those eggs with someone else if we're not together at some point in the future (life is long).

TL;DR Freezing your eggs is an insurance policy against the future.

EDIT: Due to reasons I'd rather not make public beyond what I've shared above, I've contacted institutions who are doing research in coercing stem cells into egg or sperm cells. I expect in the next 10 years for this to be a solved problem, and the egg retrieval process to be deprecated in favor of a quick blood draw and incubation period to coax stem cells to reproductive cells. But unfortunately, this isn't solved yet.

> Frozen embryos are extremely viable

Well, eggs aren't embryos... They're not fertilized and they're not dividing so I'm not sure how you propose checking viability before freezing... The stats cited in the article are that only 2000 frozen eggs have ever been successfully used world-wide.

You're right, you can't, which is why a large number are harvested at a time to ensure a proper viability ratio.

This research on coercing stem cells into eggs/sperm is hugely important and significant. It's the key bottleneck holding us back from safe, effective, affordable genetic modification of ourselves: http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/535661/enginee...

Exactly what about that could possibly be "safe" ? Even if it were medically safe, how would you make sure that people used it in societally acceptable ways and that it didn't imperil the long term genetic pool of the human race ?

> Even if it were medically safe, how would you make sure that people used it in societally acceptable ways and that it didn't imperil the long term genetic pool of the human race ?

You can't. That's both the beauty and fear of it. We'll either have immortality, or extinction.

"The philosophical problem with Eugenics is that it involved culling imperfect people who already exist. Now we can cull imperfect people who don't exist, so they can't complain!"

(for the record, this is a joke)

I'm a glowing plants kickstarter backer. You and your team are doing great work!

> glowing plants

That is possibly the best biotech startup name I have yet seen.

> daycare is easier to afford, or a part time nanny.

OP said raising a child, not paying others to raise a child in your stead.

So, my brother works in one of those labs. Whatever they have told you, don't bet on it. Making totipotent stem cells (SCs) is a lot different than multipotent SCs. The tragedy of the Sasai incident [1] I think highlights the difficulty and the false hopes in that field. There are a LOT of issues that are very difficult to get us to totipotency [2]. For instance, in regular development, we do not yet know how cells communicate exactly. Is Wingless or SonicHedgeHogg transferred extracellularly (in Brachet's cleft) or via thin processes in the 'bucket-brigade' manner. How do the cells move during gestriculation? Etc. You may think these are pedantic, but if it is bucket-brigade mechanism, then having other cells is required to develop and return SCs to totipotency. And before you think that these are solvable issues, look into embryology [3] a bit more. For example, it is unknown what role the direction of the sperm's entrance has on the development of a chordate embryo. Just waving hands and saying 'they'll figure it out' isn't the best way to think about this. These biological systems represent 4.5 billions years of hacking and tinkering that we are just now starting to understand.

TL;DR: The body is incredibly fascinating and complicated, is a series of cells going back 4.5 Gy, and is very expensive to research.

[1]http://www.nature.com/news/stem-cell-pioneer-blamed-media-ba...

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_pluripotent_stem_cells

[3]http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/F/Fro...

EDIT: Not to scare you or your wife away though. Anyone thinking of IVF should go for it, it is your right. Best to you and yours. If your writing like this on HN, you sound like you will make a great parent!

> Not to scare you or your wife away though. Anyone thinking of IVF should go for it, it is your right. Best to you and yours. If your writing like this on HN, you sound like you will make a great parent!

Not at all! I'm aware that biotech research occurs on the order of years and decades. I just need to stay alive long enough. And thank you :)

> In most cases, you're further advanced in your career when older, giving you more income, thereby more purchasing power.

In practice, when people get 'further advanced' in a career over the years, their spending typically drifts up to match any increases in income (or to match the spending of their peers, which typically amounts to the same thing) so they don't really end up with more money. You can always plan on being an exception, to be sure, but I think it's a good idea to be very wary of planning on being an exception.

>Also, more resources available to you means you can be more discerning about your partner selection.

More discerning from a much smaller pool.

Hi, we also went through this process recently (Successful IVF and we froze the spare eggs).

I am not sure what statistics you were quoted, but our doctor quoted us:

~70% chance of successfully thawing an egg with observed cellular division.

~30% chance of successfully thawing an egg without observed cellular division.

~55% chance of successful pregnancy from an implanted egg, thats why they implant two in many cases, making it roughly 25% chance of twins, 50% chance of one and 25% of none.

If you have got enough eggs the thawing isn't really a problem, but most harvestings only get around 5 - 8 eggs of which 2 - 3 are good. We were extremely lucky in harvesting 21 eggs off which 8 were grade A quality.

Just another perspective.

"Are they more likely to find a partner as they get older?"

Even if not, it's still a good thing to hope for. It is a psychological effect that gave birth (no pun intended) to a market. After finally acquiring wealth in exchange for one's prime years of life, there aren't many further things worth exchanging those gains for but another dream.

I disagree that finding a partner is harder as you get older -- at least in the upper third or so by income of white-collar workers, which is the demographic that is being targeted here.

I mean, past a point, sure. Probably it's a lot harder to find a partner at age 45 than it is at 30. But I think it's easier at 30 than at 25.

My intuition (and cultural tropes) tells me this varies depending on whether you are male or female. You can look at the age differentials of married couples and see that women will marry men who are older than them (or men will marry women who are younger) meaning that as women age they should likely have a harder time finding a partner.

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