Ethics of fertility preservation for prepubertal children: Should clinicians offer procedures where efficacy is largely unproven?

Abstract

Young children with cancer are treated with interventions that can have a high risk of compromising their reproductive potential.’Fertility preservation’ for children who have not yet reached puberty involves surgically removing and cryopreserving reproductive tissue prior to treatment in the expectation that strategies for the use of this tissue will be developed in the future. Fertility preservation for prepubertal children is ethically complex because the techniques largely lack proven efficacy for this age group. There is professional difference of opinion about whether it is ethical to offer such’experimental’ procedures. The question addressed in this paper is: when, if ever, is it eth..