This story delivers a clear conclusion: "Bottom line, a woman who wants to conceive a child at some point in the future should carefully consider the options — the risks, costs, and unknowns."
In the face of a practice "gaining in popularity," this story did a public service by explaining how much is not known about the practice of freezing eggs, and by issuing a clear caveat to consumers. This method could be applied to many health news stories every day.
Excellent. Estimate of $10,000 or more per procedure and states that insurance usually doesn’t cover it.
The story says there are "few reliable statistics" in one place and "there are no reliable numbers for how many women have chosen to have their eggs frozen so far" in another and "there are no guarantees" in a third place. So when you don’t know the denominator and are unsure of the numerator, it’s hard for women to pinpoint the potential benefits.
The sidebar has a list of bullets of "things to consider before freezing your eggs" that is, in essence, a list of potential harms.
The story is quite clear about the unclear picture of the evidence for egg freezing: "few reliable statistics…two professional groups still consider egg freezing experimental…there are no guarantees."
Several good independent sources cited.
Not applicable. The story didn’t really compare egg freezing with other fertility approaches, but that’s OK because it really focused on questions about the egg freezing trend. The story did touch on several advances "nudging the use of egg-freezing forward" and on several methods to test the genetic viability of both eggs and embryos.
The story is clear about the availability: "half of 282 US fertility centers surveyed offer egg freezing."
The story states that it "is new enough that there are few reliable statistics." Good context. And, at the end, it says that "Still, several advances are nudging the use of egg-freezing forward."
This story did not rely on a news release.
Systematic, Criteria-Driven
Monday at #ADA2021, an infectious disease epidemiologist, a journalist, and a researcher shared perspectives on communication of risk in the era of COVID-19: http://ow.ly/ROfR30rMeE7 @AstleyCM @garyschwitzer @berthahidalgo @ADA_DiabetesPro
Shoutouts to @susan_bewley @drkevinknopf @MichaelBaum11 in this call for more than fawning coverage from press releases for these kinds of stories.
Also, linked history inside goes back 5 years just on Grail apparently trying to become Holy Grail. https://twitter.com/garyschwitzer/status/1408849696416841731
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