HEALTH ISSUE: EASY WAY OUT?

IVF may soon make most babies

More Accurate For Reproduction Than Having Sex: Report

          Couples may stop having sex to conceive babies within a decade and use in vitro fertilisation instead, sceintists say in a new report.

          Thirty somethings could routinely conceive babies using IVF within the next ten years because it will have become better than sex as means of reproduction, the scientists from Australia and Europe predicted.

          Advances in IVF technology mean it will be possible to produce embryos with a success rate of virtually 100% and cultivate them in computer-controlled storage facilities.

          The couples going for IVF have a much better chance of conceiving through IVF than young adults peak condition, who have only a one-in-four chance a month of conceiving naturally, according to the report.

           Among those over 35, the chance of natural conception falls to less than one in 10. Though modern fertility techniques have meant the healthiest couples already have a 50-50 chance of success using IVF, the authors of the new report say that this may just be the beginning.

          Gabor Vajta, an Australian vet and lead author of the report, worked with experts from the European Society of Human Reproduction and Empbryology and pointed out that test-tube embryo production in cattle was 100 times more efficient than natural means of calf creation.

          There is no reason, Vajta argues, why artificial human reproduction should not also become 100 times more effcient than the traditional precess of "trying for a baby".

         "We are not quite at that stage yet, but it's where we're heading. Natural human reproduction is at best a fairly inefficient process. Within the next five to 10 years. couples approaching 40 will access the IVF industry first when they want to have a baby, " the London Times quoted John Yovich, a do-author of the report, as saying.