Aggregated News
Making babies is a business as well as a way of life for father-of-eight Kostas Pantos.
As founder of Genesis, Greece’s biggest fertility clinic, he oversees 5,000 cycles of treatment every year, or about a third of the total in the country, and five times what he did just a few years ago. Away from the wrangling over Greek finances, the medic and his team want to make Greece a hub for assisted reproductive technology, or ART, a worldwide market predicted to exceed $20 billion by 2020.
“There might be a financial crisis, but people will still pay to get a child when they want one,” said Pantos, 58, as he monitors a procedure he can see on a live television feed in his office. “We’re booming.”
Endorsed by a government running out of money, the plan now is to bundle treatment with a vacation, much as rival Spain has done, combining two rare growth industries in a country struggling to emerge from the worst downturn in its history. The economic crisis, and loose regulation coming with government...