The Golden Globe of Infertility

Posted on by Paul Turek, MD

I’m tickled! Tickled to be speaking in Los Angeles next weekend. Honestly, I can’t count how many invited lectures that I’ve given over the last decade or two, in all corners of the world. But this keynote invitation is a horse of a different color, to borrow a phrase from the Wizard of Oz.
Nope, sorry, I won’t be appearing at the Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Instead, I will be at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza, a little over a mile away, speaking at the Fertility Planit Show.

A Golden Globe Weekend

Why is this exciting? Well, it’s a unique and historic event. This show is the first consumer show of its kind, ever. A bunch of smart, motivated and creative infertility patients are throwing this event to help each other in their common quest. Enabled by the power of social media, hundreds and maybe even thousands of like-minded souls are congregating in one place to form what you might call a brand new community. It’s like what the Golden Globes were 70 years ago, when it first started.
And, instead of watching the Golden Globe awards on TV, you can follow the Fertility Planit program over the web, from anywhere in the world, and without the ads!

A Golden Globe Feeling

Here’s why I am jazzed to be giving a keynote at the Show this weekend:

  • It’s an honor to be chosen by the people whom I try to help in my daily life as a doctor. It’s not like I’ve been voted into office or anything, but it does make me feel like I’m making a difference during my time on this good earth
  • I’m being introduced by noted author Greg Wolfe who wrote the hilarious “How to Make Love to a Plastic Cup” in which he relates his almost comical journey as an infertility patient who simply wasn’t one of those who “tried once and boom!”
  • Collaborating with the non-profit Fertility Within Reach, we will roll out our brand-new-in-the-box, never seen before, national initiative called “Banking on the Future.” This program seeks to ensure that “fertility is not a casualty of cancer.” We will start by removing cost as an obstacle for sperm banking for teens and young men with cancer.  My friends, tissue banking (sperm and eggs) to avoid future infertility is easily the lowest hanging fruit in the world of preventative medicine. Ultimately, our goal is to enable all teens and young adults in need in the U.S. who are facing cancer the opportunity to bank reproductive tissue.

Although the idea of walking down a red carpet in Hollywood and receiving a statue of a globe is appealing, it doesn’t hold a candle to that salt-of-the-earth experience that childless couples have when bearing a child. In our field, it’s that secret little Nobel Prize-winning feeling we get everyday just by helping to build families.