Latest news with #ZevWilliams
Time of India
4 days ago
- Health
- Time of India
AI helps woman get pregnant after 20 years of failed fertility treatments in historic IVF breakthrough
A New York couple is finally having a baby after almost two decades of failing to conceive a long, emotionally trying, physically draining, and medically frustrating ride. Their story, foiled by 15 failed IVF treatments and consultations from experts on every continent, was redeemed by an AI-based fertility tool designed at Columbia University. It's a breathtaking medical milestone that could change the face of treatment for male infertility globally. The long-awaited pregnancy of the couple is not only a medical success; it's a victory of endurance, ingenuity, and the ability of technology to overcome very intimate kinds of difficulties. For those with apparently insurmountable barriers, this case provides something invaluable: hope. With the help of AI, the era of reproductive health is about to experience a breakthrough period where even the most challenging fertility situations can be addressed not with desperation, but with data, precision, and empathy. AI brings new hope as woman gets pregnant after 20 years of failed IVF by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Order New Blinds Online & Get $199 Home Installation Learn More Undo For the majority of couples, fertility treatments are emotionally and financially exhausting—if not more so when they are unsuccessful time and time again. This couple was no exception. They struggled for nearly 20 years to have a biological child. Even with access to cutting-edge fertility treatment, surgeries, and international consultations, they were consistently given the same message: conception was all but impossible. The fundamental problem was with the husband, whom the doctor diagnosed with azoospermia , a rare but serious condition where no sperm is present in the ejaculate. Introducing STAR: The AI tool revolutionising male infertility treatment Just when hope appeared to be lost, the couple approached Dr. Zev Williams, a fertility specialist at Columbia University , whose team had been developing a cutting-edge technology: Sperm Track and Recovery (STAR). The AI system was developed to identify good sperm in semen samples where previously none were seen. How STAR works: A microfluidic chip filters and isolates constituents in the semen. A high-speed imaging system takes millions of microscopic frames. A machine learning algorithm scrutinizes these images to spot rare, cryptic sperm—even a few viable cells that might be used in IVF. "Finding a needle in a thousand haystacks" is how Dr. Williams described it. "But STAR can accomplish that in a couple of hours. And it's so gentle the sperm it retrieves can still be used to fertilize an egg." AI breakthrough helps couple conceive after 20 years of infertility In this New York couple's situation, standard lab technicians spent two entire days searching through the semen sample, but couldn't locate a single sperm cell. STAR located 44 viable sperm, though, within an hour—a figure large enough to continue with in-vitro fertilization (IVF). Miraculously, the pair did not require further cycles of hormonal treatment or surgery. With the sperm isolated by STAR, the IVF cycle went smoothly in March 2025. It worked—and the pair is now pregnant with their first child. Dr. Williams noted that the case is by no means a fluke. STAR has the potential to overturn fertility treatment, particularly for men with non-obstructive azoospermia. Non-invasive: No surgery is required to look for or retrieve sperm. Accurate: AI can locate what trained experts may not spot. Hope-restoring: For couples informed their chances were "zero," this provides a new avenue. Affects 1 in 6 people worldwide, states the World Health Organization, and male infertility accounts for roughly 50% of these. For many, diagnosis of azoospermia seemed the end of the road until now. Broader future of AI in reproductive health Whereas STAR today solves sperm detection, scientists think AI can revolutionize many other aspects of fertility treatment as well: Detecting high-quality eggs and embryos Being able to predict IVF success rates Tailoring treatment protocols Finding subtle abnormalities in reproductive tissue "There are things happening that we are not aware of now," said Dr. Williams. "But with AI, we can finally observe them." What is Azoospermia: The "hidden" cause of male infertility Azoospermia occurs in about 1 in 100 men and is responsible for 10–15% of male infertility. It exists in two types: Obstructive azoospermia: The testes generate sperm, but it can't be ejaculated because there are blockages in the reproductive system. Non-obstructive azoospermia: The body is not able to produce sperm at all or only in very low amounts. Some common reasons are: Genetic disorders Chemotherapy or radiation therapy Hormonal imbalance Drug abuse or exposure to toxins Structural defects such as varicoceles (dilated veins in the scrotum) Conventional therapies for azoospermia usually include risky operations to harvest sperm directly from the testes or using donor sperm—both of which pose emotional and ethical challenges for most couples. Also Read | Ed Sheeran's wife Cherry Seaborn worked at Deloitte for 10 years; her LinkedIn profile goes viral AI Masterclass for Students. Upskill Young Ones Today!– Join Now
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Business Standard
11-06-2025
- Health
- Business Standard
AI Miracle: First-ever pregnancy using breakthrough infertility tech
Imagine trying to have a baby for nearly 20 years, going through 15 IVF cycles — only to hit roadblock after roadblock. That's exactly the story of a couple from New York, who just had a life-changing breakthrough thanks to a cutting-edge AI system. A Columbia University team, led by Dr Zev Williams, has launched STAR (Sperm Track and Recovery), an AI-powered platform that identifies rare sperm in azoospermia cases. 'If you can look into a sky that's filled with billions of stars and try to find a new one, or the birth of a new star, then maybe we can use that same approach to look through billions of cells and try to find that one specific one we are looking for,' says Dr Williams. In this case, STAR is trained to pick up 'really, really, really rare sperm,' he says. 'I liken it to finding a needle hidden within a thousand haystacks. But it can do that in a couple of hours—and so gently that the sperm that we recover can be used to fertilise an egg.' What is Azoospermia? One of the biggest hurdles in male infertility is called azoospermia — a condition where no sperm is detectable in a semen sample. It can be 'obstructive,' where there is a blockage preventing sperm from entering the ejaculate, or 'nonobstructive' when it is due to decreased sperm production by the testis. Azoospermia affects nearly 1% of the male population and about 10–15% of all males with infertility. Before STAR, the only options were invasive procedures or using donor sperm. Possible causes of azoospermia Genetic conditions Medical treatments — such as chemotherapy or radiation Recreational drug use Varicoceles (enlarged veins in the scrotum) Absence of the vas deferens (on one or both sides) Vasectomy Other less understood causes, including poor testicular development during fetal or childhood stages, or exposure to environmental toxins How does STAR work? This system uses: An AI-powered algorithm A microfluidic chip that filters semen A scanner that processes millions of images per hour to identify even the rarest sperm Dr Williams and his team spent five years building a new system that uses AI to find sperm in samples where none can be seen. The process involves a special chip that moves the semen through a tiny tube. If the AI spots a sperm cell, it redirects that small part of the sample into a separate tube so it can be collected. The few sperm found this way can then be frozen, stored, or used to fertilise an egg. The breakthrough moment Technicians scanned samples for 48 hours straight and found virtually nothing. But in just one hour, STAR identified 44 viable sperm samples — enough for IVF. The couple had done everything: overseas experts, surgery, chemical treatments. Nothing helped. The husband's azoospermia had defied treatment via surgery, overseas experts, and chemical prep. However, STAR proved there were sperm, just hidden deep. They used it during a regular IVF cycle, and by March 2025, it resulted in a successful fertilisation. For the couple, using STAR did not require any additional testing or procedures; their successful cycle in March proceeded no differently than any of the other IVF cycles they had experienced. A wider future for AI in fertility care STAR isn't just a one-time solution — it opens doors for AI to revolutionise fertility diagnostics and treatments. Dr Williams adds that azoospermia is only one of many infertility issues that AI could address. 'There are things going on that we are blind to right now. But with the introduction of AI, we are being shown what those things are. The dream is to develop technologies so that those who are told 'you have no chance of being able to have a child' can now go on to have healthy children.'
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Doctors Report the First Pregnancy Using a New AI Procedure
Doctors at Columbia University Fertility Center have reported what they are calling the first pregnancy using a new AI system, in a couple that had been trying to start a family for nearly two decades. The pregnancy was possible due to an advance developed by the Columbia team, led by Dr. Zev Williams, director of the center, to address azoospermia, or a lack of detectable sperm in the ejaculate. Male factors account for about 40% of infertility in the U.S., and azoospermia is responsible for about 10% of those cases. Until recently, there was little doctors could do to address the lack of sperm needed to fertilize an egg, other than using donor sperm. While to the naked eye, a sperm sample from a man with azoospermia might look normal, the microscope tells a different story, Williams says. Highly trained technicians rarely find any sperm in these samples, which are often filled with other debris. Add to that the fact that sperm are the smallest cell in the body, and it's not surprising that even the best fertility technicians rarely find sperm in azoospermia samples. That's where AI comes in. Williams and his team spent five years developing a system that combined an AI algorithm for detecting sperm with a fluidic chip that passed the semen sample through a tiny tubule on a plastic chip. If the AI picked up sperm, that tiny portion of semen would be directed to a separate tubule and collected. The few sperm isolated in this way could then be stored, frozen, or used to fertilize an egg. Called STAR, for Sperm Track and Recovery, the system was inspired by similar approaches that astrophysicists use to enlist AI to detect new stars and planets. 'If you can look into a sky that's filled with billions of stars and try to find a new one, or the birth of a new star, then maybe we can use that same approach to look through billions of cells and try to find that one specific one we are looking for,' says Williams. In this case, STAR is trained to pick up 'really, really, really rare sperm,' he says. 'I liken it to finding a needle hidden within a thousand haystacks. But it can do that in a couple of hours—and so gently that the sperm that we recover can be used to fertilize an egg.' Read More: IVF Patients Say a Test Caused Them to Discard Embryos. Now They're Suing STAR is distinct from AI systems that have been developed to scan and detect specific features, Williams says, because it combines that analysis with the ability to also actively isolate the target in question—in this case, any sperm found in a semen sample. The system can scan eight million images in about an hour, and Williams remembers the moment when he was convinced that STAR could become a powerful tool for treating certain forms of infertility. 'To test the system, before we discarded samples where embryologists could not find any sperm, we decided to run those samples through the system. The embryologists really worked hard to find sperm, since they didn't want to be outshone by a machine. In one of the samples they analyzed for two days and found no sperm, STAR found 44 in an hour.' Rosie and her husband became the first couple to get pregnant using STAR in March 2025. The couple spent nearly 19 years trying to get pregnant, and Rosie—who asked to use a pseudonym to protect her privacy—says their Orthodox Jewish faith kept them hopeful during 15 unsuccessful IVF cycles. Prior to the pregnancy, they had explored multiple options to address her husband's azoospermia, including surgery and enlisting an expert from overseas to manually analyze and isolate sperm from his samples. They also researched efforts to extract sperm that were more controversial because they involved using chemicals that could potentially be detrimental to the quality of sperm. 'There really was nothing else out there,' says Rosie, 38, of their options before learning about STAR. 'Especially because I am running quite a few years ahead of where we should be [for fertility]. I'm not that old, but in fertility years—egg-wise—I was reaching my end.' They were introduced to Williams and his fertility program through a community group and learned everything they could about the system. 'We knew exactly what it was, and knew what they were trying to do,' says Rosie. 'If they could get sperm in a more natural way without chemicals and hopefully chose the good ones—if the program was able to do that, we knew we had a better chance.' Read More: Why It's So Hard to Have Your Fertility Tested For the couple, using STAR did not require any additional testing or procedures; their successful cycle in March proceeded no differently than any of the other IVF cycles they had experienced. 'We were keeping our hopes to a minimum after so many disappointments,' says Rosie. 'We came in, did what we had to do for the cycle, knowing there was probably a very small chance of anything happening. Why should this be any different from every other time?' Usually in an IVF cycle, there are far more sperm than eggs, says Williams, but in cases of azoospermia, the opposite is true. So to ensure that a couple has the best chance of a pregnancy, Williams and his team collect several batches of sperm using STAR and freeze them. Then they coordinate the mother-to-be's ovulation cycle on IVF, and on the day they retrieve her eggs, they collect a fresh semen sample, run it through STAR, and use any sperm collected to fertilize any available eggs. The frozen sperm serve as backup in case no fresh sperm can be found. Within two hours after collecting her husband's sperm that March, they learned that Rosie's eggs had been successfully fertilized and were ready to be transferred to her uterus a few days later. 'After the transfer, it took me two days to believe I was actually pregnant,' says Rosie. Now four months along, Rosie is receiving standard obstetric care, and all indications are that her pregnancy is proceeding well. 'I still wake up in the morning and can't believe if this is true or not,' she says. 'And I still don't believe [I'm pregnant] until I see the scans.' Williams says azoospermia is only one of many infertility issues that AI could address. 'There are things going on that we are blind to right now. But with the introduction of AI, we are being shown what those things are. The dream is to develop technologies so that those who are told 'you have no chance of being able to have a child' can now go on to have healthy children.' Contact us at letters@
Time Magazine
10-06-2025
- Health
- Time Magazine
Doctors Report the First Pregnancy Using a New AI Procedure
Doctors at Columbia University Fertility Center have reported what they are calling the first pregnancy using a new AI system, in a couple that had been trying to start a family for nearly two decades. The pregnancy was possible due to an advance developed by the Columbia team, led by Dr. Zev Williams, director of the center, to address azoospermia, or a lack of detectable sperm in the ejaculate. Male factors account for about 40% of infertility in the U.S., and azoospermia is responsible for about 10% of those cases. Until recently, there was little doctors could do to address the lack of sperm needed to fertilize an egg, other than using donor sperm. While to the naked eye, a sperm sample from a man with azoospermia might look normal, the microscope tells a different story, Williams says. Highly trained technicians rarely find any sperm in these samples, which are often filled with other debris. Add to that the fact that sperm are the smallest cell in the body, and it's not surprising that even the best fertility technicians rarely find sperm in azoospermia samples. That's where AI comes in. Williams and his team spent five years developing a system that combined an AI algorithm for detecting sperm with a fluidic chip that passed the semen sample through a tiny tubule on a plastic chip. If the AI picked up sperm, that tiny portion of semen would be directed to a separate tubule and collected. The few sperm isolated in this way could then be stored, frozen, or used to fertilize an egg. Called STAR, for Sperm Track and Recovery, the system was inspired by similar approaches that astrophysicists use to enlist AI to detect new stars and planets. 'If you can look into a sky that's filled with billions of stars and try to find a new one, or the birth of a new star, then maybe we can use that same approach to look through billions of cells and try to find that one specific one we are looking for,' says Williams. In this case, STAR is trained to pick up 'really, really, really rare sperm,' he says. 'I liken it to finding a needle hidden within a thousand haystacks. But it can do that in a couple of hours—and so gently that the sperm that we recover can be used to fertilize an egg.' STAR is distinct from AI systems that have been developed to scan and detect specific features, Williams says, because it combines that analysis with the ability to also actively isolate the target in question—in this case, any sperm found in a semen sample. The system can scan eight million images in about an hour, and Williams remembers the moment when he was convinced that STAR could become a powerful tool for treating certain forms of infertility. 'To test the system, before we discarded samples where embryologists could not find any sperm, we decided to run those samples through the system. The embryologists really worked hard to find sperm, since they didn't want to be outshone by a machine. In one of the samples they analyzed for two days and found no sperm, STAR found 44 in an hour.' Rosie and her husband became the first couple to get pregnant using STAR in March 2025. The couple spent nearly 19 years trying to get pregnant, and Rosie—who asked to use a pseudonym to protect her privacy—says their Orthodox Jewish faith kept them hopeful during 15 unsuccessful IVF cycles. Prior to the pregnancy, they had explored multiple options to address her husband's azoospermia, including surgery and enlisting an expert from overseas to manually analyze and isolate sperm from his samples. They also researched efforts to extract sperm that were more controversial because they involved using chemicals that could potentially be detrimental to the quality of sperm. 'There really was nothing else out there,' says Rosie, 38, of their options before learning about STAR. 'Especially because I am running quite a few years ahead of where we should be [for fertility]. I'm not that old, but in fertility years—egg-wise—I was reaching my end.' They were introduced to Williams and his fertility program through a community group and learned everything they could about the system. 'We knew exactly what it was, and knew what they were trying to do,' says Rosie. 'If they could get sperm in a more natural way without chemicals and hopefully chose the good ones—if the program was able to do that, we knew we had a better chance.' For the couple, using STAR did not require any additional testing or procedures; their successful cycle in March proceeded no differently than any of the other IVF cycles they had experienced. 'We were keeping our hopes to a minimum after so many disappointments,' says Rosie. 'We came in, did what we had to do for the cycle, knowing there was probably a very small chance of anything happening. Why should this be any different from every other time?' Usually in an IVF cycle, there are far more sperm than eggs, says Williams, but in cases of azoospermia, the opposite is true. So to ensure that a couple has the best chance of a pregnancy, Williams and his team collect several batches of sperm using STAR and freeze them. Then they coordinate the mother-to-be's ovulation cycle on IVF, and on the day they retrieve her eggs, they collect a fresh semen sample, run it through STAR, and use any sperm collected to fertilize any available eggs. The frozen sperm serve as backup in case no fresh sperm can be found. Within two hours after collecting her husband's sperm that March, they learned that Rosie's eggs had been successfully fertilized and were ready to be transferred to her uterus. 'After the transfer, it took me two days to believe I was actually pregnant,' says Rosie. Now four months along, Rosie is receiving standard obstetric care, and all indications are that her pregnancy is proceeding well. 'I still wake up in the morning and can't believe if this is true or not,' she says. 'And I still don't believe [I'm pregnant] until I see the scans.' Williams says azoospermia is only one of many infertility issues that AI could address. 'There are things going on that we are blind to right now. But with the introduction of AI, we are being shown what those things are. The dream is to develop technologies so that those who are told 'you have no chance of being able to have a child' can now go on to have healthy children.'
Vox
05-05-2025
- Health
- Vox
What if menopause were optional?
is a senior correspondent for Vox, where she covers American family life, work, and education. Previously, she was an editor and writer at the New York Times. She is also the author of three novels, including the New York Times bestseller Outlawed. Will my generation be the last to go through menopause? Just a few years ago, that would've seemed like a bizarre question — I've always assumed that I and every other human being with ovaries would eventually experience what my grandmother called 'the change of life.' But now, researchers are calling into question what once seemed like basic facts of human existence. 'What if menopause happened later?' they are asking. 'What if it never happened at all?' In recent years, patients have gained access to a wider variety of medications to treat menopausal symptoms like hot flashes and vaginal dryness. But newer treatments, one already in clinical trials, go deeper: The goal is not just to treat the symptoms, but to actually slow down ovarian aging so that the hormonal changes associated with midlife happen later — or maybe even never. 'For the first time in medical history, we have the ability to potentially delay or eliminate menopause,' Kutluk Oktay, an ovarian biologist at Yale University, said in a release last year. I cover reproductive health, and my inbox has been filling up for months with news of research like this. As an elder millennial barreling toward the uncertainty of perimenopause (which some research suggests can start as early as one's 30s), I've received these updates with interest, sure, but also with a fair amount of trepidation. On the one hand, the loss of estrogen that comes with menopause is associated with a host of illnesses and conditions, from cardiovascular disease to osteoporosis. Delaying the menopausal transition even five years 'would result in an enormous improvement in terms of women's health and decreased mortality,' Zev Williams, the chief of reproductive endocrinology and infertility at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, told me. 'It's a really exciting opportunity.' On the other hand, the idea of getting rid of menopause can feel like yet another way of insisting that women remain young and fertile forever. At a time when JD Vance is talking dismissively about the 'purpose of the postmenopausal female,' I'm unsettled by the prospect of treating women's aging out of their childbearing years, in particular, as something that must be cured. If the idea of stopping menopause is a fraught one, though, it's also an opportunity to think about what we want from our later lives, and to consider what it would look like to balance the real medical concerns of midlife and beyond with the fact that women are flesh-and-blood human beings who, like everyone else, get old. As Ashton Applewhite, author of the book This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism, put it to me, 'you can't stop aging, or you're dead.' To understand menopause, it helps to understand a little bit about ovaries, the human reproductive organs that store and release eggs. Starting in puberty, these glands ramp up their production of estrogen, a hormone that leads to breast development and a host of other changes to the body. Throughout the reproductive years, the ovaries make estrogen and other hormones according to a monthly cycle to help prepare the body for potential pregnancy. Starting around a person's late 30s, however, estrogen production starts to drop off. By the mid-40s, people typically enter perimenopause, which means 'around menopause.' This period is characterized by unpredictable ups and downs in estrogen, though on a general downward trend (Mary Jane Minkin, an OB-GYN who teaches at the Yale School of Medicine, likens the pattern to the stock market during the Great Recession). That hormonal decline can lead to symptoms like irregular periods, hot flashes, and night sweats. A lot of the symptoms most commonly associated with menopause actually start in perimenopause, and they can range from annoying to devastating. Perimenopause has been getting a lot of media attention lately, along with more focus from brands who may want to sell you stuff to help you manage it. Problems like hot flashes and brain fog can cause women to miss work, resulting in $1.8 billion in lost work productivity in the US per year, according to one study. The loss of estrogen can cause vaginal dryness, which can cause discomfort during sex and, in some cases, constant pain. At some point, the ovaries stop producing eggs, and menstruation stops entirely. This is menopause, and it's diagnosed when someone has gone without a period for a full year. It happens at an average age of 51, though Black and Latina women reach menopause earlier than white and some Asian American women. Though some symptoms, like dryness, persist after menopause, others, like hot flashes, often resolve, Minkin told me. Hormonal changes in the body around menopause are also linked with increased risk of cardiovascular disease, Stephanie Faubion, director of the Mayo Clinic's Center for Women's Health and medical director of the Menopause Society, told me. Blood pressure and cholesterol tend to rise during this time, as does insulin resistance, a condition that can lead to diabetes. Bone density also falls during and after the menopause transition, increasing the risk of osteoporosis. Some experts believe that menopause is part of the reason women spend more time than men living with chronic diseases. 'Women live longer than men,' gerontology professor Bérénice Benayoun told Vox last year, 'but they usually do so in a much more frail state.' Given all this, it's reasonable that more experts are looking at menopause and wondering, what if we could just…not? Hormone therapy — typically estrogen taken on its own or with progesterone, sometimes in the form of birth control pills — already exists to treat the symptoms of menopause. The treatment was stigmatized for decades after a 2002 study linked it to breast cancer and other ailments, but doctors now say the benefits often outweigh the risks. Taking estrogen can dramatically reduce hot flashes, and even reduce cardiovascular risk while patients are on the medication. When you look at illnesses and conditions like dementia, heart disease, and stroke, 'there's a much, much lower rate in women compared to men, until ovarian function stops. Then they start to catch up,' Williams said. 'If we have a way of extending the ovarian lifespan in a way that's safe, then you're allowing the ovary to provide all these incredible health benefits' for a longer period of time. Estrogen therapy can replace some of the estrogen a person's ovaries are no longer producing, but it doesn't actually stop those organs' decline. To do that, some researchers are looking at more involved procedures. In one recent study, Oktay, the Yale biologist, and his team used a mathematical model to predict how a technique called ovarian tissue cryopreservation might work in healthy patients. The process, typically used in cancer patients undergoing treatment that could harm their fertility, involves removing a section of ovary, freezing it, and reimplanting it at a later date. This technique, if used in healthy patients under 40, 'would result in a significant delay in menopause,' according to the study. Oktay and his team have begun preserving ovarian tissue from healthy patients, with the goal of reintroducing it when the patients are close to menopause. Since the women are still young, the team will have to wait years for real-world results, Oktay told me. But the technique does work to restore ovarian function in cancer survivors, he said. About 10 percent of women enter menopause at age 55 or older, Oktay told me, and they tend to have longer life expectancy and less risk of osteoporosis and diabetes than people who go through the transition earlier. 'We're saying, why not make everybody that lucky?' Williams, the Columbia endocrinologist, and his team are working on a different, less invasive option. They're currently in the midst of their first human trial of rapamycin, an oral medication typically used as an immunosuppressant in higher doses. Rapamycin has been found to extend lifespan in some animal studies, suggesting to some that it might help humans live longer. Williams and his team have also found that the drug can extend ovarian function and fertility in mice. The Columbia researchers are now monitoring 50 women between the ages of 35 and 45 who have taken either rapamycin or a placebo, asking them questions about their mood, memory, and sleep quality, as well as checking their ovarian function through blood work and ultrasounds. They don't have results yet, but they've seen no serious side effects so far. The goal isn't just to extend fertility, though 'as a fertility specialist, that's obviously something that I think about all the time,' Williams said. It's also about extending the benefits that ovaries provide to women's health, potentially reducing their lifetime risk of chronic illness. Research like Williams's has generated significant excitement, as the idea of pushing back menopause starts to move into the mainstream. Toward the end of the Biden administration, Jill Biden launched a women's health initiative dedicated to studying the idea. The ovaries are 'the only organ in humans that we just accept will fail one day,' Renee Wegrzyn, director of the agency in charge of the first lady's initiative, told the New York Times last year. 'It's actually kind of wild that we all just accept that.' Some are skeptical, though, that delaying or eliminating menopause would be an entirely good idea. For one thing, the link between menopause and illness isn't completely clear-cut. People who go through menopause later tend to have better health outcomes, 'but is it chicken or egg?' Faubion asked. 'Do their ovaries last longer because they're otherwise in better general health than the other people that go through menopause early?' Prolonging ovarian function — and thus increasing people's lifetime exposure to estrogen — could also come with risks of its own, like increases in breast cancer or blood clots, which have been linked to the hormone, Faubion said (going through menopause after age 55 is associated with an increased risk of breast cancer). For some, the tradeoffs might be worth it, but it's not necessarily true that later menopause would mean better health across the board. With more invasive treatments, there are also other questions to consider. 'What are the ethics of taking out a healthy organ from a healthy person' — a surgical procedure that could fail — 'all in the name of 'delaying menopause?'' Faubion asked. Oktay, the biologist studying ovarian tissue cryopreservation, told me the procedure is a minimally invasive laparoscopic surgery, and can be performed at the same time as another abdominal surgery like a C-section. Many participants in his study have a family history of severe menopause complications or conditions that can worsen with menopause, he said, giving them a reason to want to delay the transition. For Minkin, the Yale gynecologist, the experimental treatments are intriguing if they can extend fertility. But for dealing with the physical challenges of menopause, she's not sure they're necessary: 'There are plenty of easy ways to give people hormones.' Some people, including survivors of certain cancers, aren't able to take hormones, and new treatments could be helpful for them. Meanwhile, some experts see delaying menopause as most beneficial for people who experience the transition early. About one percent of women go through menopause before age 40, and five percent before age 45. Cancer treatments or autoimmune conditions can cause early menopause, but sometimes, the cause is unknown. Since early menopause is associated with elevated health risks, a new way to treat it 'would probably result in a net benefit for population health,' Nanette Santoro, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, told Time. Going through menopause early can be deeply upsetting to people, especially (though not exclusively) if they're hoping to have children. But when it happens at the average time, this stage of life can come with social and emotional benefits, despite the physical challenges. 'It's liberating,' Applewhite told me. 'No more mood swings, no more worries about getting pregnant.' 'I don't know any woman, including yourself, who wants to be bleeding every single month,' Denise Pines, creator of the menopause summit WisePause, told me. Indeed, research has found that women often become happier as they age, especially after midlife — potentially because they're less consumed with caring for children and other family members. Some anthropologists believe that female humans, unlike other animals, live beyond their reproductive years to help care for grandchildren (it's called the 'grandmother hypothesis'). But Minkin offered a more expansive view of this theory: In early human settlements, pregnant people couldn't do heavy labor like moving rocks around. The grandmother was 'somebody who moves the rocks,' she said. She also described postmenopausal women as 'shooting saber-toothed tigers.' Even the troublesome symptoms of menopause, such as hot flashes and night sweats, can be a useful 'disruptor' in people's lives, Pines said. 'Where women have been so giving and outwardly focused, suddenly you have to focus on yourself.' 'That gives you a chance to reset everything else around you,' from relationships to career, Pines said. 'It's such a great time to really reimagine who we are.' Applewhite welcomes the recent surge in awareness around menopause, and says hormone therapy to treat its symptoms can be helpful — 'I'm not saying, keep your body pure and avoid the temptations of Western medicine.' But when it comes to putting off menopause or eliminating it entirely, she said it's concerning 'when inevitable transitions of aging are pathologized.' That's especially true for women's aging, which is doubly stigmatized in American culture. 'Under patriarchy, a woman's value is linked to her reproductive value,' Applewhite said. It's why there's so little research into the health of older women: 'because we are no longer reproductively useful.' As appealing as the idea of extending a person's healthy lifespan is, I can't quite get past the ovary of it all. I, too, have heard from post-menopausal people about the liberation they feel when they exit their reproductive years. I, too, have at times been frustrated by doctors' focus on my reproductive capacity over other aspects of my health. I want to be healthy as I get older, but I also want to accept my aging (and for the people around me to accept it), rather than feeling constant pressure to stave it off. Applewhite wants women of all ages to see 'later life as a time of enormous power and liberation and possibility,' and I'd like to see it that way too, not as something to be avoided at all costs. When I shared some of these concerns with Williams, he asked me if I'd feel the same trepidation around treatments that focused on other areas of the body. 'You want to extend normal heart function, liver function,' he said. But 'for some reason, if you say, we want to slow ovarian aging, that touches on a very different note.' It's a fair point, especially since a lot of the health outcomes he and others are trying to promote aren't about fertility or attractiveness or any of the attributes our culture demands that women maintain in our quest to remain forever young — they're about things like cardiovascular and mental health. I want those! Williams argued that understanding ovarian aging might actually remove some of the negative messages around menopause and getting older more generally. He also studies recurrent miscarriage, which 'has always had a tremendous amount of stigma associated with it.' What's helped reduce that stigma has been 'when it goes away from this realm of myth and taboo and folklore, and we start to understand the process,' he says. It's worth noting that research into menopause, like so much work on reproductive health and indeed health in general, is imperiled under the Trump administration. When I tried to visit the website for Jill Biden's menopause initiative, I found that it was gone. Renee Wegrzyn, the head of the initiative, was fired in February. In a time when a lot of medical research is simply disappearing, it's hard to look askance at treatments that could improve people's lives. After talking to Williams and other experts, I'm not against the idea of a medication that could help people live longer without heart attacks or cognitive decline. But as I get older, I'm also keenly aware that what happens outside our bodies can affect our health as much as what happens inside them. When I asked Pines what she'd like to see for people in perimenopause and menopause right now, she said she wants a future when people in this stage of life 'are not dismissed,' when 'we can talk about menopause the same way we talk about puberty.' She'd also like to see workplaces support women experiencing perimenopause symptoms, including by offering insurance plans that cover the treatment of them. And she wants OB-GYNs, internists, and other doctors to be specifically trained in perimenopause and menopause, something that's often lacking.
