The optimal age to freeze eggs is 19

This is an article that you need to read critically, beyond the headline.

Even a few paragraphs down they say this:

> The optimal age to freeze eggs varies depending on the source and metric, but almost all sources agree it's sometime between 19 and 26.

So there's some heavy bias inserted already into the title.

The next chart shows a peak around 19, but if you read the fine print it's not a chart about eggs at all. The subtitle says it shows:

> probability of getting pregnant for couples not on birth control

Not the quality of eggs frozen. They're saying one thing in text and showing a chart of something else. If you can't imagine why couples in their early 20s might have a higher rate of pregnancy than couples in their 50s then you might want to think a little deeper about the factors that go into that.

The writeup then goes into polygenic embryo screening, which then jumps to improving IQ by selecting embryos, which gets to their final argument which is that it's easier to collect more eggs when younger. So freezing a lot of eggs when you're younger allows for more boosting of your child's IQ through genetic screening based on a company called Herasight's data. Herasight has been widely criticized for overselling their abilities. Also, why do so many rationalist writeups end up back at a conversation about genetics and IQ?

This article is answering a different question to what it is asking. It's asking "What is the most effective strategy to freeze your eggs if you're absolutely certain you will need to".

The reason women freeze their eggs in their early 30s is because they still have a good chance for it to be effective and they now have a strong idea they'll need to. You don't have that second piece of information at age 19.

Or to be specific: What is the size of the cohort of women you are expecting to freeze their eggs at the age of 19, who will use those frozen eggs. How many of them will give birth to children without the help of IVF, and how many will choose never to have children.

I think this article is a good example of rationalism. Which is basically getting very mathsy about 1 specific very of the data, without viewing the data in the context of the decision that is being made.

For example, what is the percentage of women you expect to freeze their eggs at age 19, who you then expect to be unable to afford the $500 every year to keep those eggs frozen over the next decade?

Having done IVF with my wife I think this is the most underrated fertility advice available today.

I don't understand why governments of countries with increasing average age and low birth rate don't pay for this for all women. This is one the best pro-family policies that can be implemented.

I don't see a very big reason mentioned: You might not need it at all. Sure, the optimal age to freeze might be 19, but if 80% of women are done with children by age 30, why would you have every woman spend the equivalent of buying a small car on something they're overwhelmingly not going to need?

Waiting to get a good balance of "your eggs are still reasonably healthy" and "if you haven't had kids until now, it'll probably be a while still" is probably the reason behind the current advice.

If you're curious what it's like for a couple of normies doing IVF, I wrote down our experience here to the degree I remembered: https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/IVF

It's also the optimal age to have children. Fertility is highest, the woman is likely healthy and strong, lowest risk of complications.

The optimal age to have children is way before you need to rely on frozen eggs (one reason among many being that this process doesn't always work)

Since having kids is so tiring in the early years and often lead to a divorce, it is better to have them early when you are still fresh and handle better the lack of sleep, divorce early and then enjoy part time parenthood when you are still youngish.

I feel I am a better parent now that I am sharing custody of my kids and can better balance personal life and hobbies and parenthood.

A cheaper option would be to find someone looking for kids with no romance and agree on having shared parenthood.

Employers encouraging egg freezing by offering egg freezing benefits is an abysmal conflict of interest. Employers reap tremendous medium-term benefits and the woman bears all of the long-term risks -- in this case the biggest risk of all .

Employers should be required to pay for future maternity disability care insurance e.g. 2-3 years of maternal leave fully paid, elective at any time, even after they separate from the company. Also disability compensation in the event that fertility fails. e.g. $500k / missed fertility .

That would reveal the true success rate of the procedure. If employers or fertility clinics believed it to be a deterministic process, the risks for the employer would be low.

> Lastly, the stem cells we're planning to use to make these eggs accrue mutations with age, and we don't currently have a good method to fix these before making them into eggs. These mutations will bring additional risk of various serious diseases, only some of which we currently have the genetic screening to detect.

I've always found this one fascinating. Somehow human cells age and humans get old and die but humans can somehow make an entirely new creature through reproduction where that is reset and most of the defects from the parent are gone as well.

How does that work and what stumbling blocks exist that prevent us from replicating it?

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It's wild that in the year 2026 modern science can't recreate a SINGLE cell (which is what a human egg/ovum is).