Egg-freezing advocates invoke fear to win patients

Mark Surrey, fertility specialist to the Kardashians, opens with the story of a 44-year-old lawyer who waited too long to freeze her eggs. The patient radiated health, he says, but age had damaged her pregnancy chances.

“It’s not something you can fix with a diet or with acupuncture or with Pilates.”

About 100 guests sit before him in the Beverly Wilshire’s Champagne Room, sipping bubbly and jotting notes at this “Egg Freezing Party” hosted by the marketing start-up EggBanxx. The company rents swanky hotel spaces across the country to pitch women on a fertility treatment once available only to young cancer patients.

As more women delay parenthood, a growing number are turning to egg freezing, a procedure deemed experimental until 2012, as a way to pause the biological clock. But some doctors and medical ethicists are troubled by the marketing of egg freezing and the use of it as a hedge against aging.

Demand for the treatment skyrocketed last year, fertility specialists say, after Facebook and Apple offered to cover a portion of its cost as a benefit for employees. The procedure’s popularity and low odds of success have heightened tension between marketers and some doctors: What is responsible advertising — and what is fear mongering?

Read full original article: How fear fuels the business of egg freezing

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