IVF Advances Mean Women may Soon Give Birth at 100

Scientists predict that advances in test-tube fertilisation procedures may soon make it possible for women to give birth even at the age of 100.

Advances in test-tube fertilisation procedures may soon make it possible for women to give birth even at the age of 100 - if they do live that long.

A research team, led by Davor Solter of the Institute of Medical Biology in Singapore, believes that there will be an end to infertility in 30 years' time, with every woman able to have a baby.

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Using sophisticated techniques not yet available, they think sperm and eggs will be created from skin cells, and combined to make embryos.

The claims were made by leading scientists asked to predict advances in reproduction by 2038.

"It means every person regardless of age will be able to have children. Newborn children could have children and 100-year-olds could have children. It could easily happen in the next 30 years," the Mirror quoted Solter, as saying.

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Artificial Insemination is a medical procedure usually used to treat infertility. In this procedure, sperm is placed into a female's vagina, uterus or fallopian tubes by artificial means.

The researchers say that future techniques would allow scientists to create thousands of embryos to experiment on.

Solter said: "I have no idea what kind of moral value or rights we'd give to those embryos. It could be terrible to start, and then become a fact of life. Maybe 30 years from now we'll read someone made 20,000 embryos and studied their development and we'll decide it's OK."

Invitro Fertilisation
During IVF fertilization takes place invitro, in an incubated petri dish. The resulting embryo is transferred back to the uterus on Day 3 at the 6-8 cell stage. Sometimes the embryo transfer in done at the blastocyst stage on Day 5. The embryo is drawn into a specialized catheter along with a small amount of culture medium and is transferred to the uterus.

The predictions have been published in Nature.

Source-ANI
RAS/K

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