The fertility drug, Elonza, is approved in Europe, as is the anesthesia antidote, sugammadex, though it ran into trouble with U.S. regulators.

FORBES: Merck Shutters Productive Labs

Then she gave up, and took the fertility drug Clomid.

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One of the disadvantages of shunning fertility drug treatment is that ovulation may happen naturally over a weekend, when no one at the clinic is available to retrieve eggs.

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But among the labs Merck is shuttering are the Newhouse, Scotland, operation that invented both Saphris and sugammadex and the Oss, Netherlands, site that Schering had kept as the center of its fertility drug business.

FORBES: Merck Shutters Productive Labs

For the past two years, Chanda and her husband, Joe, parents of twin 6-year-old boys in Melbourne, Florida, have been trying to get pregnant: six rounds of fertility shots and three cycles of the fertility drug Clomid.

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Merck also expects to apply for U.S. approval of five drugs in 2013: two allergy medicines, an anticlotting drug, a fertility treatment and an improved version of Gardasil, a vaccine that prevents sexually transmitted cancers.

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