IFG Markets Unproven 'Three-Parent IVF' to Older Women — SkimNews
Get the Health newsletter
Daily health & science — research, biotech, public health, the studies worth knowing. Free.
- International Fertility Group of North America (IFG) has connected hundreds of women from the U.S. and Europe with clinics abroad offering mitochondrial replacement therapy (MRT), despite the procedure being illegal in the United States and lacking peer-reviewed validation.
- SAGA Clinic in Tirana, Albania performed MRT on patients like Dutch woman Wendy, using donor eggs and embryos created by embryologist Birol Aydin, while displaying an FDA registration logo despite not being an approved facility for this procedure.
- IFG claimed a pregnancy success rate over 50% for MRT cycles and cited 34 births via its program by February 2025, but provided no substantiating data and later removed all MRT references from its website following investigative inquiries.
- STAT’s investigation reviewed internal communications, client contracts, and unpublished research, finding inconsistent recordkeeping, questionable data presentation, and evidence that MRT does not address the primary causes of age-related infertility.
- Aimee Eyvazzadeh, a Bay Area fertility specialist, referred around 50 patients to IFG and MRT clinics over three years but reported no successful births, reflecting broader anecdotal evidence of low success rates.
- Jeffrey Kahn of Johns Hopkins and other ethicists warned that women are effectively paying to be 'guinea pigs' in an unregulated, intergenerational experiment with unknown long-term health consequences for children born via MRT.
Why it matters: Hundreds of women have spent tens of thousands of dollars on a medically unproven procedure marketed as a fertility breakthrough, while clinics and facilitators operate in regulatory gray zones without publishing outcomes—putting patients at financial and biological risk and undermining scientific oversight.
Ask SkimNews
