perhaps an easier question. What’s the probability of implanting six and having all six take.
When I said remote, I didn’t mean winning the lottery odds, I meant in comparison to the liklihood that the mother isn’t telling the truth.
The ethics boards have restrictions or guidelines on implanting more than three because of the increased risk of multiple pregnancies, but even then, if it was highly likely than all would take, then implanting three would even be suspect.
If the odds of an implanted embryo taking and maturing is 90%, if they’re independent (meaning each doens’t improve the liklihood of the others) then the odds of all six taking fall to 50/50.
At 80% success rate, 4 in 5 attempts succeeding, the odds of all six taking falls to 25%.
The reality is in vitro success rate is in the 30-35% rate for women under 35 years of age.
For all six to take at a 35% rate, it’s 0.2% or 2 in 1000. From the 2 in a thousand shot, we now would need two of the six embroyos to split into viable twins.
Given observations of the mother’s interviews, I’d say the odds she isn’t telling the truth are in excess of 10%.
The probablility of 6 for 6 succeeding and then splitting for twins, less than 1%, probably closer to 0.01%.
Could it happen, yes.
But that misses the point too. Even implanting six when you have no job and six children is, IMHO, irresponsible.
