Weekly Business Insights from Top Ten Business Magazines | Week 306 | Shaping Section | 1

Extractive summaries and key takeaways from the articles curated from TOP TEN BUSINESS MAGAZINES to promote informed business decision-making | Week 306 | July 21-27 , 2023

Making babymaking better

IVF is failing most women. But new research holds out hope for the future

The Economist | July 20, 2023

Listen to the Extractive Summary of the Article

After louise brown was born in Manchester in July 1978, her parents’ neighbours were surprised to see that the world’s first “test-tube baby” was “normal”: two eyes, ten fingers, ten toes. In the 45 years since, in vitro fertilisation has become the main treatment for infertility around the world. At least 12m people have been conceived in glassware. An IVF baby takes its first gulp of air roughly every 45 seconds.

In a world where one person in six suffers from infertility, such successes are rightly celebrated. Less discussed are the problems of IVF.   The obstacle is a lack of progress in understanding the basic mechanisms that determine fertility. At last, however, the science is making headway, holding out more promise and less heartache for generations of parents to come.

Over the years IVF has become better at making babies and safer for the women who bear the brunt of the treatment. The rate of twin and triplet deliveries has plummeted, reducing the number of risky pregnancies. Hormone treatments are safer. Combined with egg and sperm freezing, donation and surrogacy, IVF has given many, including same-sex couples and singletons, a path to parenthood where they had none.  Yet the process remains grueling and costly. It is physically painful for women and emotionally draining for both sexes. For many, fertility treatment is an unaffordable luxury. Some countries ration treatment according to a conservative moral code.  And the process itself is uncertain – 770,000 IVF babies born in 2018 required some 3m cycles.

These problems all share a fundamental cause. Although reproduction is one of the most basic aspects of human biology, scientists have an astonishingly poor grasp of how a new life comes about. The essentials are obvious: a sperm and an egg must meet. But many of the cellular, molecular and genetic underpinnings of babymaking remain a mystery.  In the face of all this, ivf is woefully inadequate.

Recent scientific work offers some hope. Researchers in Japan and America are exploiting stem cells, which have the ability to become any of the body’s many specialised tissues, to make eggs from skin and blood cells, a process called in vitro gametogenesis (IVG).  Emerging technology could usher in a new revolution, empowering women—and men—to have the babies they want, when they want them.

3 key takeaways from the article

1. Since 1978, in vitro fertilisation has become the main treatment for infertility around the world. At least 12m people have been conceived in glassware. An IVF baby takes its first gulp of air roughly every 45 seconds.
2. In a world where one person in six suffers from infertility, such successes are rightly celebrated. Less discussed are the problems of IVF.   The obstacle is a lack of progress in understanding the basic mechanisms that determine fertility.
3. Recent scientific work offers some hope. Researchers in Japan and America are exploiting stem cells, which have the ability to become any of the body’s many specialised tissues, to make eggs from skin and blood cells, a process called in vitro gametogenesis (IVG).  Emerging technology could usher in a new revolution, empowering women—and men—to have the babies they want, when they want them.

Full Article

(Copyright)

Topics:  Fertility, Technology, Biology