What AI Can Do for IVF
By Carol Lynn Curchoe and Charles L. Bormann,
Scientific American
| 01. 10. 2018
Infertility treatment is an emotional and financial rollercoaster. For couples trying to conceive (“TTC” in the many on-line support forums), repeated failure of implantation, defined as three or more failed in vitro fertilization (IVF) cycles where no clear cause can be identified, is a frequent, heartbreaking end point when the emotional, physical or financial burden of treatment becomes too high to keep looking for an answer. By some estimates, up to two thirds of patients experience failed cycles.
That means there’s a lot of opportunity to improve in a field where every small advance in technology represents a chance to make a family. A new infertility-related artificial intelligence (AI) startup thinks it can do just that—and some of the biggest players in computing are betting big that they are right.
AI is already being used to try and solve some big health care challenges. For example, IBM has developed a computational model that predicts heart failure, and has lent use of the Watson supercomputer to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York to develop cancer-diagnosis and selection-of-treatment plans. Referred...
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In the leadup to the 2024 election, Donald Trump repeatedly promised to make IVF more accessible. He made the commitment central to his campaign, even referring to himself as the “father of IVF.” In his first month in office, Trump issued an executive order promising to expand IVF access. The order set a 90-day deadline for policy recommendations for “lowering costs and reducing barriers to IVF,” although it didn’t make any substantive reproductive healthcare policy changes.
The response to the...
Sir Francis Galton, 1890s, by Eveleen Myers (née Tennant)
npg.org
Public Domain via Wikipedia
As has been discussed in recent issues of Biopolitical Times (1, 2), there are, increasingly, companies that claim to be selling parents better babies by selecting the “best” embryos. These services don’t come cheap – think $50,000, or even more, for embryo testing, plus perhaps as much again for IVF and concomitant services. To most of us, that is extremely expensive...
By Margaux MacColl, The San Francisco Standard | 09.17.2025
Designer babies are coming soon to an IVF clinic near you.
Nucleus Genomics, founded by Kian Sadeghi in 2020, when he was just 20, got its start analyzing genomes to weigh a person’s risk of everything from cancer to ADHD...
By Marianne Lamers, NEMO Kennislink [cites CGS' Katie Hasson] | 09.23.2025
Een rijtje gespreide vulva’s gaapt de bezoeker aan. Zó ziet een bevalling eruit, en zó een baarmoeder met foetus. Een zwangerschap, maar dan zonder zwangere vrouw, gestript van zorgen, gêne en pijn. De zwangerschapsmodellen en oefenbekkens, te zien in de...