Fertility over 40, IVF

UK – The age factor: IVF still cannot turn back the biological clock – but the rate of over-40s pursuing it is soaring

Source Daily Mail

At the time, the birth of Louise Brown in Oldham, Manchester, on July 25 1978 was met with predictable star-gazing and horror: could this ‘test tube’ baby be the start of a science fiction future? Is it unnatural? Unethical? One magazine called Brown’s conception via IVF ‘the biggest threat since the atom bomb’.

Four decades and eight million babies later, IVF is still eye-wateringly expensive but widely accepted, hugely successful, and generally available for anyone with the cash – whether they have fertility issues, or have delayed childbearing beyond the natural scope of fertility.

It means, in a year, any woman under 42 can have an 80 percent probability of conceiving using their own eggs, and we can even screen embryos for genetic defects before they’re implanted. And the babies are healthy – far from the unnatural aliens that critics predicted in the 70s.

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