Thirty years of IVF fertility treatment

The birth of the world's test tube baby heralded a new era of fertility treatment, and thirty years on 12,000 IVF babies are born every year in Britain alone.
The development of In Vitro Fertilisation, or IVF as it is commonly known, meant doctors could fertilise a woman's egg in a laboratory, before placing it in her womb to develop.

Since Doctors Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards artificially orchestrated the birth of Louise Brown, IVF has undergone a substantial amount of progress.

Along with steadily raising the rate of success in IVF treatment from their earliest ventures, scientists used the contraceptive pill to more conveniently schedule IVF cycles, making the process easier for doctors and patients.

They also perfected the technique of freezing and thawing embryos, making the technique significantly more effective.

In 1992, researchers developed a method of injecting a single sperm cell directly into an egg, greatly increasing the chances of fertilisation for men with low sperm production.

Increasing effectiveness of the treatment has also meant doctors can implant fewer embryos into the womb – reducing the chance of multiple pregnancies.

And the latest development is a screening process which screens embryos for genetic faults, checking the baby's chromosomes against those of the parents to give it a greater chance of survival and good health.

But these advancements have gone hand in hand with criticism of IVF on both moral and clinical grounds.

Opponents of research into IVF included Enoch Powell, who in 1985 submitted a bill to Parliament which would have prohibited any further embryo research if it had been passed.

Questions have been raised over the ethics of being able to ‘screen’ embryos for potential genetic traits, either good or bad, before they are implanted – the so-called “designer baby” argument.

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