... may the New Year be one of joy, happiness and prosperity for all mankind THE JEWISH NEWS STAFF And Their Families extend heartiest greetings to the entire Jewish Community ofMichigan with gratitude for the splendid cooperation that has enabled us to work together for good community spirit. Charles A. Buerger Arthur M. Horwitz Marianne Taylor Brian Lawrence Alan Hitsky Elizabeth Applebaum Phil Jacobs Jennifer Finer Glenn Triest Seymour Manello Illana Greenberg Gail Zimmerman Danny Raskin Rick Nessel Kathy Johnson Barbara Lopez Julie Yolles Daniel Lippitt Susie Sherman Kari Horenstein Tobie Kuppe Betsy Leemon Lisa Wylin Holly Piskie Dharlene Norris Marlene Miller Karen lndig Heather Bondy Brigette Thompson Sylvia Stafford Marla Cooper Cathy Ciccone Curtis DeLoye Ralph Orme Gayle Baldi Debbie Schultz Heidi Brandemihl Wishing All Our Friends and Clients A HAPPY & HEALTHY NEW YEAR LTC ENIGIHT MASTER OF dr DAVID • KAREN LEO • SUE NIKI • ALICE RUTH • SHANNAN • JOE R24 352-7030 26571 West Twelve Mile Road • Southfield Sperm cells are injected directly into the ovum. Sue Maniloff Lynne Konstantin Leslie Joseph Jill Davidson Sklar Carla Jean Schwartz Burt Chassin Sharon Brown Linda McCarthy Nancy Cameron Julie Edgar Deborah Cherrin Paula Smith Shari Cimino Patty McMurray Ellen Finn Robin Magness Robyn Katz Tom Murphy Our Best Wishes For A Happy New Year! b h ' OLL 3947 W. 12 Mile Berkley OSPITAL (conveniently located near 1-696) re t- 543-3115 TOYSHOP SOLDIER Mon.-Sat. 10-5:30 Fri. 10-8 CLASSIFIED GET RESULTS! Call The Jewish News 354-5959 A Solution For Infertility? WENDY ELLIMAN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS round 10 percent of all cou- ples who want children in the Western world are in- ertile. In almost half these cases, it is because of problems as- sociated with the production or delivery of sperm. "Despite this, almost all infer- tility research has focused on women," says Professor Neri Laufer, head of the Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics at the Hebrew University-Hadas- sah Medical Center on Mount Scopus and chairman of the Is- rael Fertility Society. "It's in the female reproductive system that the NIH, for example, has in- vested most of its infertility re- sources. Knowledge about male infertility is still rudimentary, which makes the techniques we've introduced in Israel very important." Nature is so extravagantly ex- cessive in producing sperm (there are as many as 300 million of them in the teaspoon of ejaculate expelled during each sexual cli- max), that there would seem to be little problem in at least some getting through to the egg. But even in fertile men, no more than 50 of the hundreds of millions of sperm in each ejaculate ever reach the egg. Very large quanti- ties of perfectly formed sperm are thus essential. Sperm, however, can become nonviable for a wide range of rea- sons. "Environmental conditions can damage sperm production: Overcrowding, stress, alcoholism, smoking, chemical pollution, ra- diation and poor nutrition are some of them," explains Profes- sor Laufer. "Congenital abnor- malities also damage male fertility. Cystic fibrosis is among these: One of its non-pulmonary aspects is lack of exit vessels from the man's testicles. And infection can be a third cause: infections of the sexual organs, venereal dis- ease, prostatitis, epididymitis and, of course, mumps." The harm done to male fertil- ity by all this, however, can now be countered by a technique developed three years ago in Belgium and extended and de- veloped at Hadassah. "The technique is known as In- tra Cytoplasm Sperm Injection or ICSI," says Professor Laufer. "It involves drawing sperm cells out of the ejaculate and injecting them directly into the ovum or egg, sparing them the long, diffi- cult journey up into the fallopian tube. All we need to succeed are a few normal sperm cells, which need not even be mobile." To this Belgian method, Pro- fessor Laufer and his team added their own expertise in in vitro fer- tilization. "Since 1988, we've been working with Professor Aaron Lewis of Hadassah's Laser De- partment; we've created a laser that can drill a microscopic hole into an ovum — the ovum itself, remember, is no bigger than a grain of sand — without damag- ing any of the surrounding struc- tures. In doing this, we not only spare the sperm cell the trouble of breaking through the egg's `shell,' but also significantly im- prove chances of the embryo hatching." Some 20 couples have become pregnant at Hadassah with ICSI followed by micromanipulation, among them several for whom re- ligion and culture ruled out donor insemination as an option. Pro- fessor Laufer and his team are also using ICSI in men who have no sperm at all in their ejaculate. These patients fail to ejaculate sperm because of a blockage somewhere along the line, in or around the epididymis which stores mature sperm, or in the vas deferens, the duct through which