In Vitro Fertilization accounts for at least 1% of births in the United States of America.
June 20, 2008 -- One in 100 U.S. babies was conceived in a test tube -- and half these babies were twins, triplets, or higher multiple births, the CDC reports.
The CDC's most recent data on in vitro fertilization or IVF covers the year 2005. The data come from 422 of the 475 U.S. medical centers that provide various forms of assisted reproduction technology to people with fertility problems.
The trend toward greater use of IVF is driven in part by women delaying attempts to make babies until they develop their careers and achieve more financial security. But the development of better reproductive technologies is also making IVF a more attractive option.
My expectation is that improvements in IVF techniques will combine with genetic testing to make IVF highly advantageous over sexual intercourse for starting pregnancies. First off, improvements in IVF will lower costs, lower risks, and increase odds of success. Second, genetic testing will allow IVF users to choose genetic characteristics for their offspring. Once we know a great deal about the functional significance of tens and hundreds of thousands of genetic variations many will elect to use IVF combined with pre-implantation genetic testing to choose embryos that contain combinations of genetic features that people want for their children.
I expect IVF popularity to skyrocket in the next 30 years as IVF gives people a big edge in making their babies, smarter, healthier, more attractive, better behaved, and otherwise having more of the attributes that parents want their kids to have.
By Randall Parker at 2008 June 26 08:02 PM Biotech Reproduction | TrackBackOh, Yes!
Improvements in obtaining eggs from a woman really give "high-grading" a terrific boost.
For instance, fertilize twenty eggs then do some PCR to test for (first of all) deleterious conditions, then secondarily, advantageous conditions.
This is likely to give parents a child that is perhaps the most outstanding (and everyone has seen that children in large families do in fact vary) child if they were to have twenty children! Let them do that again, and the odds of having two children if such fine quality are 1/20 x 1/20 = 1/400. Who benefits? Kids, certainly. Parents, as their investment in these kids is more likely to pay out. Society, as these first rank folks are quite likely to pay more int taxes than they receive in services.
Who loses? Good question.
I wrote a SF book on this, "Smart Kat." Not a bad read if anyone is interestd,