July 31-August 6, 2003

city beat

fineprint

Illustration By: Jeffrey Bouchard

Less words, more story.

But the Sperm is Gone Forever

In these tough economic times, it’s nice to know somebody cares about your pocketbook. In this case, it’s Drexel University’s IVF and Embryo Genetics Center, which recently started offering refunds should in vitro fertilizations go awry.

No, they won't give customers any cash back should their kids grow up to be a sulky brats or child stars gone wrong. But Jeffrey Russell, the center's director, says the $10,000 in vitro investment shouldn't be money down the drain if sperm doesn't take to egg like it should.

Russell says the cost, coupled with a lack of insurance for the process in Philadelphia, meant couples unable to conceive naturally were striking IVF from their list of options. (IVF is a procedure in which a doctor retrieves eggs from a mother and combines them with daddy's sperm to, hopefully, make babies. To qualify, patients must be under 40 years old with a normal reproductive anatomy and a history of infertility, while meeting a certain hormone level. The procedure is considered a success when a pregnancy proceeds past the first trimester.)

In the past, even if the IVF was unsuccessful, the couple would still pay in full. Now if the cycle doesn't work, they get 80 percent of the cost back to either try, try again or take the adoption route.

Russell knows the biz well, since he treats about 350 patients a year at a private IVF program in Delaware. There's no money-back guarantee there though, since insurance coverage is better than that offered in Philly. Here, he expects about 500 patients to give it a shot in the first year -- Virginia is the closest place with a refund policy -- but estimates up to 40 percent of those tries will fall short. —Kelly Housen

Justice in a Box

Listen here, Phoenix. You may be edging up on us population-wise, but by God, we got our "Justice Talking" kiosk first.

Part of the Justice Talking Citizen Education project, the interactive, museum-style listening stations are designed to enhance awareness about issues -- including affirmative action, gay marriage, cross burning and gender wars -- and their impact on the democratic process.

They've already been placed in libraries and jury assembly rooms in several other cities, so with Philly's lone box now sitting in City Hall obscurity, Los Angeles and San Antonio remain ahead of us.

Installed on July 20 in the First Judicial District Information Center, the sleekly elegant kiosk has gone largely unnoticed with fewer than five people using it. (A user can don a pair of headphones and listen to a tape of NPR’s award-winning program for a couple of minutes or hunker down with a "justice box," which is a compact disc player with several discs and suggested reading materials.) That doesn’t mean they’ve gone totally unappreciated though.

"I listened to the entire 60-minute CD about executing the mentally retarded, and it opened up ways of viewing the issue beyond what you'd find in a typical news story," says clerk Karla Burgess.

Center Director Boyd Taggart admits that most of the 300 to 400 monthly visitors probably don't arrive with burning questions about judicial policy. "But," he says, "it's always a good thing to get involved in these sorts of broader issues, and the kiosk is one way of doing so."

President Judge Frederica Massiah-Jackson pushed for the kiosk and says "it's a perfect spot for providing hands-on info about democracy to tourists and citizens of Philadelphia."

Still, Kathryn Kolbert, executive producer of Justice Talking, says the kiosks are ideally designed for libraries and jury assembly rooms. Getting them into the latter is only being considered even though the 75,000 sets of ears that annually pass through the Criminal Justice Center's jury room have time to kill.

"If [it] is basically neutral and doesn't excite people, and we can conclude that, it sounds like a positive thing," says Administrative Judge Jim Fitzgerald, noting that the court "tries to be very careful about what we expose our jurors to." (Mindful that jury exposure is a valid concern, the kiosks and listening devices are designed so courts can select the available programs and topics.)

Still, Julia Hoke, an attorney promoting the kiosks, thinks one could land in the Free Library.

"We had meetings with the library in the spring, and they seemed to be excited about the idea, but with funding cuts, they were concerned about bringing something new into the library in the midst of a budget crisis," she says.

Maybe someone should tell them it's free. —Trish Boppert