IVF practitioners work to discredit restorative reproductive medicine

Fertility industry insiders who financially profit from IVF are working to discredit Restorative Reproductive Medicine (RRM), the natural approach to infertility, painting RRM as "an approach long confined to the medical fringe."

Key Takeaways:

• Advocates of Restorative Reproductive Medicine, a natural approach to infertility, met with White House aides regarding legislation dubbed the “RESTORE Act.”

• IVF doctors are attempting to dismiss the treatment as being on the ‘fringe’ of modern medicine. 

• Restorative Reproductive Medicine has a higher success rate of live births, does not have the health risks of IVF, and treats children with dignity and respect instead of as commodities.

The Details:

Proponents of RRM, a natural approach to infertility, met with White House aides this year regarding infertility treatment legislation dubbed the "RESTORE Act." The bill seeks to "expand and promote research and data collection on reproductive health conditions, to provide training opportunities for medical professionals to learn how to diagnose and treat reproductive health conditions, and for other purposes."

Higher Success Rate

"For the first time, the White House and top political leaders are directly spotlighting family formation, real reproductive health and root cause infertility care as national priorities," said Emma Waters, Policy Analyst in the Center for Technology and the Human Person at The Heritage Foundation.

While IVF has long been the mainstream and accepted way to combat infertility, it's been seen by many doctors as a band-aid approach to infertility rather than a healing approach. RRM, as the National Catholic Bioethics Center explained, "aims to treat the root causes of dysfunctions that make it difficult or impossible for couples to conceive and bring to birth children."

In an article published by The Heritage Foundation, Waters explained that RRM-based treatments have a higher success rate than IVF. According to Waters:

RRM succeeds even after IVF has failed, at a fraction of the cost, especially across multiple pregnancies. One study published in 2024 found that 40% of couples previously diagnosed with infertility conceived naturally after undergoing RRM-based treatments compared with a 24% success rate with IVF. Another 2018 study found that 32.1% of women who had an average of two failed IVF cycles conceived naturally following targeted medical interventions with RRM.

Attempts to discredit RRM

As the nation awaits the Trump administration's promised report on IVF, restorative reproductive medicine [RRM] is making headlines, but not everyone is happy about it.

Dr. Kaylen Silverberg is said to be "a leading expert in fertility medicine and the IVF expert on the White House Domestic Policy Council." He is also the advisory board chairman for Americans for IVF, an organization pushing for insurance coverage for IVF. He appears to oppose RRM and is working to portray it as flawed.

He told The New York Times, “All of a sudden it [RRM] has gotten into the discussion," adding that he hadn't heard of “restorative reproductive medicine” until this year. Yet, RRM has been around for decades and the International Institute for Restorative Reproductive Medicine was formed in November 2000. It’s surprising that an expert in fertility medicine hadn’t heard of it until this year.

Silverberg and others in the IVF industry believe that if advocates of RRM have the attention of the White House and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., efforts to expand access to IVF will be derailed. Why would he and other doctors so strongly attempt to discredit RRM and claim IVF as the best solution?

According to the 2021 Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) Compensation & Production Report, the median income for fertility specialists is $461,997, with salaries topping over $700,000. The average cost of just one round of IVF is $21,000, and couples often have to undergo more than one round before they experience a live birth. 

In other words, IVF is a lucrative business.

Reality Check:

But an often overlooked issue isn't which infertility approach is more cost-effective or successful, but which is most ethically sound.

The main ethical concern with IVF is that it destroys human lives at a very high rate — a higher rate than abortion does. IVF is carried out 2.5 million times globally each year  — yet only 500,000 babies are actually born from the IVF procedure annually, according to research published in Reproductive Biomedicine Online. That means that each year, if just one embryo is created during each IVF cycle (the average is seven), at least 80% — at least two million — of the human beings created through IVF either die during the process, are frozen indefinitely, or are destroyed.

IVF was promised as a way to help create life, but instead, it denies millions of human beings their dignity and their right to life. The practice of IVF involves creating multiple human lives, grading them, labeling them, and then choosing which to destroy and which to give a chance at life. While infertility is a heavy burden to carry, it doesn't justify the destruction and dehumanization of millions of innocent people. Children are not products; IVF treats them as if they are.

IVF has been associated with significant health risks for both mother and child, including a 40% increase in the chance of birth defects and double the chance of stillbirth. Other issues for children born via IVF include a higher risk of the following: childhood leukemia, low birth weight, higher blood pressure, hormonal imbalances and advanced bone age, cardiovascular issues and cerebral palsy, autism spectrum disorder, and infertility.

The Bottom Line:

There are physicians and researchers around the world who are dedicated to RRM and to restoring a person’s natural fertility. For Silverberg and his IVF allies to dismiss RRM and all of the work put into helping women to conceive naturally is to deny the healing that comes through RRM and to disrespect preborn children as living human beings.