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.
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Your success numbers are accurate, and my understanding of the woman’s earlier IVF treatments is that she did have multiple embryos, only one or two of which would take. I’m trying to dance around the fact that we know how many embryos were implanted in this case without getting anyone in trouble for releasing confidential medical information. It’s interesting that, until recently, this doctor boasted one of the lowest success rates in the industry. I suspect he has increased the number of embryos he implants in an effort to improve his success ratio. This has the potential for disastrous consequences, especially as technology advances in embryo manipulation. The discussion section of the case report I posted talks about why implantation and twinning rates are increasing, so the numbers you punched into the formula may be meaningless. The bottom line is we just don’t know yet.
And I wholeheartedly agree with you last sentence.
