Direito à Não Discriminação e à Verdade Biológica dos Nascidos por PMA em Portugal e no Brasil

This study discusses issues related to Medically Assisted Procreation, particularly about heterologous artificial insemination – using genetic material from third parties – and “replacement pregnancy” in Portugal and Brazil. Therefore, it addresses the right to “biological truth” for those born by PMA and non-discrimination in the use of genetic material, focusing on respect for the dignity of the human person. It is questioned how advances in science in this area can lead, in the case of PMA, to the choice of “perfect” embryos, and we start from the hypothesis that this leads to “genetic eugenics.” Methodologically, this is an exploratory bibliographical review. According to the Portuguese standard, the PMA has as beneficiaries the hetero couple, the single woman and women who are married or in a de facto union who can even have a “shared pregnancy”, but the “replacement pregnancy” is only done exceptionally and is not donor secrecy allowed. In Brazil, if it is free and with the help of relatives up to the fourth degree, regardless of the peer’s sexual orientation and maintaining the confidentiality of the donor, the “replacement pregnancy” is guaranteed to everyone.

Vasovasostomie robot assistée : résultats sur le spermogramme post-opératoire à 3 mois & la fécondité secondaire à propos de 4 cas

Objective: Evaluation of the efficacy of robotic vasovasostomy post-vasectomy. Patients and methods: We present a retrospective study of four patients aged from 36 to 51 years, who were operated of a vasovasostomy between September 2007 to July 2009. The same surgeon performed a robotic-assisted vasovasostomy, bilateral for three of them and only left unilateral for the last patient who underwent orchidectomy for right testicular seminoma. These patients had a preoperative semen analysis confirmed the absence of sperm after vasectomy. All patients had an outcome of spermatozoa on testicular deferens side in per-operative. The permeability of the distal vas deferens was systematically checked. The success criterion was the presence of spermatozoa in semen control three months. The paternity post vasovasostomy without medically assisted procreation due to father sterility was a secondary endpoint. Results: Four patients had between 0.6 and 27 million sperm per mL in postoperative semen analysis. Three to seventeenth months after the vasovasostomy, the wives of four patients have started a pregnancy between. Conclusion: The robotic vasovasostomy surgery is a technique that enabled this small group of patients having good results in regard to deferential recanalization and to recovery of secondary spontaneous fertility. A larger cohort needs to be evaluated. The medical and economical aspects of this method should be compared to those of usual technics, in vitro fertilization (IVF) and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI).

Features of a Booming Reproductive Practice: The Medical Process, the Market, the Antecedents, and the Risks

Surrogacy is a social practice aimed at the procreation of human beings through the use of biomedical technologies. It includes the willingness of a woman to carry out a pregnancy and give birth to a child, with whom she has no genetic link, which will be immediately entrusted at birth to the people who wanted and commissioned it, known as the intended parents. A multi-million transnational market has flourished around this kind of arrangement, with the national legal frameworks being very different from each other and constantly changing. The surrogate’s revenue varies considerably from country to country, as does the price that the aspiring parents pay. This chapter aims to introduce readers to the topic by providing the main coordinates of the phenomenon: how the medical-procreative procedure takes place, what the commercial transaction consists of; the history of this market, the similarity of surrogacy with other procreative practices, and the difference with other assisted procreation practices; the variety of regulatory frameworks, the flexibility of the market according to the logic of globalization; the health risks and the inevitability for the child of the fracture with the “environment” in which he began his psychophysical development.