Yes Pete the treatment she received did it appear hasten the spread of the disease and is very risky for a woman of that age.
The following was reported in The Times :
‘In Spain, where family values are important, Ms Bousada’s case provoked fresh calls last night for a legal limit on the upper age for fertility treatment. There is none at present in Spain. Nuria Terribas, from the Borja Bioethics Institute, a think-tank in Barcelona, said: “We think a limit of 45 should be established in law. Cases like this not only create physical dangers for the mother but many family complications.”
Josep Torrence, of Iglesia Plural, a progressive Catholic group, said: “The most important thing is the children are left unprotected, which should not be allowed. What is needed are stricter controls to stop this happening again.”
The care of the twins is likely to be entrusted to family members — who will be helped by lucrative media deals — possibly to a younger generation of the family such as the boys’ cousins, who are believed to be in their thirties or forties.
Her decision to give birth was condemned by Ms Bousada’s family.Manuel Bousada de Lara, 73, said: “My mother would roll in her grave if she knew what my sister has done. She would ask, ‘How’re you going to bring up two boys at your age?’”
Vicken Sahakian, the American doctor who carried out Ms Bousada’s IVF treatment, said later: “If I had known her real age I would not have treated her. She lied to me. She faked documents, knowing that my age limit for single women is 55.”
A Spanish woman who became the world’s oldest new mother when she gave birth to twins aged 66 has died.
Maria del Carmen Bousada, a single former shop assistant, was 69.
The twin boys were born in December 2006 after she underwent in vitro fertilisation.
Spanish newspapers said she died on Saturday after being diagnosed with cancer shortly after giving birth.
She said in an interview in 2007 that she had lied about her age – saying she was 55 – in order to skirt the age limit for single women at the California fertility clinic where she was treated.