A news story about Quebec’s decision to fund IVF resulting in fewer multiple pregnancies:
Quebec’s controversial decision to fund in-vitro fertilization — but under tight restrictions — appears to have dramatically reduced the rate of multiple pregnancies resulting from the technology.
Industry figures to be officially unveiled Thursday indicate just 3% of IVF procedures done in the first three months of the new policy resulted in multiples, compared with the usual in-vitro rate of about 30% multiples.
Its goal was partly to reduce the occurrence of twins, triplets and other multiples, who are much more likely to face health problems and burden the health care system than singletons.
“All of Canada has been watching the Quebec experience with provincial funding of IVF. As the evidence demonstrates, the experiment does work,” Dr. Carl Laskin, president of the Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society, argued in a letter posted on the professional group’s web site. “Provincial funding of IVF is the fundamental piece of the puzzle to maximize the use of elective single-embryo transfer and almost eliminate the occurrence of multiple births.”
I guess it depends what “elective single-embryo transfer” is… and here I confess to being completely out of my depth. As far as I can tell, it doesn’t seem to reduce the number of embryos created (then potentially discarded), in which case the news story isn’t so exciting as all that.
by 
The good news with funded IVF is that it allows for single embryo transfers to be a condition of funding (in good prognosis patients) and that results in fewer multiple pregnancies. Multiple pregnancies increase the risks to mother and child and are the less than ideal outcome. Healthier moms and babies is exciting news I think.
But, no it does not generally reduce the number of embryos created through traditional IVF that could potentially be discarded if the family that created them chooses to do so after they have completed treatment.
Unfortunately, because of the inefficient nature of human reproduction – in that most human embryos are not viable (scientific estimates are that 50-75% of all embryos are non-viable) multiple embryos are needed to produce viable embryos for even a chance at pregnancy through IVF.
Some eggs won’t fertilize at all, some will, but abnormally (which means they are non-viable), some will fertilize and then stop developing, and some will fertilize and look normal, but still many of those will likely be non-viable as well and will not implant in the uterus or become a viable pregnancy. This is true for all human embryos no matter if you are trying to conceive ‘naturally’ or through IVF. However, some of those undergoing IVF may have a higher percentage of non-viable embryos due to the underlying infertility problem.
Patients can choose to only fertilize a specific number of eggs if they have concerns over having remaining embryos after successful IVF treatments, but doing so could significantly reduce their chances of success, and put them at greater risk for complications because they might need to undergo more treatment than they would otherwise.