Phil Gingrey: “I wanted to mention to the gentleman that as an OB/GYN physician, of course I have had some experience with some of the…”

“I wanted to mention to the gentleman that as an OB/GYN physician, of course I have had some experience with some of the processes that can occur in reproductive endocrine laboratories and the technique dealing with infertile couples, and I have had a discussion with the gentleman from Maryland about this. But in a situation where the couple is infertile and it is because of male infertility, there is nothing wrong with the egg, but there is a very, very low sperm count in the male, and normally it takes probably 1,000 sperm to successfully fertilize an egg in the natural way. In fact, the normal sperm count in a male is about 60 million. But even a sperm count as low as 1,000, pregnancy can occur in the normal, natural way. But when it gets much lower than that, it becomes less and less possible. But they have a technique. And there is an acronym, Madam Speaker. There is an acronym for everything, it seems, even though this is not in the military. That acronym is ICSI. It stands for intracytoplasmic sperm injection, ICSI. And these biologists working with reproductive endocrinologists, medical doctors who specialize in infertility, can literally take a single sperm and with a needle inject that sperm into the egg and create a life, and that has been done many times, and not just at the NIH, but in a lot of these infertility clinics across this great country, in my State of Georgia. It is something that is done routinely.…”