Forty years of IVF, but not everyone’s celebrating
by Philippa Taylor, The Conservative Woman:
Louise Brown, the world’s first baby born via in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), celebrates her 40th birthday today.
Four decades after her birth it is estimated that more than seven million babies have been born as a result of IVF and other assisted reproduction treatments. Around 2.4million assisted reproductive technologies (ART) cycles are estimated to take place each year world-wide, with about 500,000 babies born as a result. If rates stay at current levels, then an estimated 157million people alive at the end of the century will owe their lives to assisted reproductive technologies (1.4 per cent of the global population).
Forty years ago, it was generally assumed that IVF would remain rare. However there has since been an explosion of assisted fertility services: intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), gamete and embryo freezing, gamete and embryo donation, embryo genetic diagnosis and surrogacy, to name some. The most common fertility treatment now is ICSI, accounting for around two-thirds of all treatments worldwide, with conventional IVF around one-third (proportions vary across countries).
IVF can provide couples with a child they desperately want. And it has brought many new lives into being, and real happiness to millions of parents.
Therefore, many now think IVF is the answer to infertility.
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