Should we Cut Back on IVF?
By Lara Salahi,
The Boston Globe
| 01. 29. 2014
In vitro fertilization (IVF) has given about 5 percent of couples who suffer from infertility a shot at parenthood. But are we overusing the technology without clearly understanding its risks? Yes, say a group of European researchers who came to the conclusion by reviewing studies on women who underwent the procedure and the health of children born using the technology.
IVF was originally approved for use in women with fallopian tube disorders and men who suffered with infertility. Today IVF is used with couples with other types of
infertility-related disorders -- including unexplained infertility. In their analysis
published Tuesday in the British Medical Journal, the European researchers say we may be overusing IVF to treat an expanded list of conditions without clear evidence that it will be effective. Even if it does work, the procedure is performed without knowing what the risks may be for the women or IVF-born children later on.
Although it’s has been around since the late 1970s, there’s a lot we still don’t know about IVF. More than 60,000 children with born through IVF...
Related Articles
By Philip Bump, Washington Post | 07.07.2025
There are a lot of questions worth asking about the New York Times’s report on Thursday about New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani. The most obvious is how Mamdani’s racial self-identification in his 2009 application to Columbia University...
By Pallab Gosh and Gwyndaf Hughes, BBC News | 06.26.2025
Work has begun on a controversial project to create the building blocks of human life from scratch, in what is believed to be a world first.
The research has been taboo until now because of concerns it could lead to...
Since the “CRISPR babies” scandal in 2018, no additional genetically modified babies are known to have been born. Now several techno-enthusiastic billionaires are setting up privately funded companies to genetically edit human embryos, with the explicit intention of creating genetically modified children.
Heritable genome editing remains prohibited by policies in the overwhelming majority of countries that have any relevant policy, and by a binding European treaty. Support for keeping it legally off limits is widespread, including among scientists...
By Rhys Blakely, The Times | 06.24.2025
Scientists have created fertile mice from male genetic material alone, a breakthrough that could one day open the door to human babies who inherit their genes from two fathers.
The experiment, led by Professor Yanchang Wei at Shanghai Jiao Tong...