‘IVF produces infertile kids’
IVF is producing a new generation of infertile children, says Australian scientist
Stuff co.nz 11 November 2016
A scientist in Australia says IVF is producing a new generation of infertile children.
John Aitken, Newcastle University laureate professor, says IVF children will require expensive medical treatment to produce their own offspring.
He also warned of ongoing health problems with IVF children, suggesting that male children of ageing fathers who used assisted pregnancy procedures were prone to cancer.
Aitken said affluence had become the enemy of fertility as Australians increasingly turned to IVF and other assisted pregnancy procedures.
One in six couples in Australia use IVF.
And one in every 25 Australian children are now born as a result of IVF.
A decade ago, it was one in 35 births.
Aitken predicted unless there was a rethink, the country was well on the way to replicating the Danish experience where one in 15 children were IVF babies.
He said the trend to IVF raised equity issues in how much money society should pay helping couples have children and research was revealing previously unsuspected health risks such as increased cancer rates among boys whose fathers – but not mothers – smoked and used assisted conception techniques.
“We should guard against recklessly marching into a future where we use too much assisted conception in order to compensate for our loss of fertility,” he said.
“Its an inexorable upward trend. We are taking recourse to IVF in increasing numbers and the thing we have to remember as a society is that the more you use assisted conception in one generation, the more you’re going to need it in the next.”
READ MORE: http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/parenting/pregnancy/conception/86390378/IVF-is-producing-a-new-generation-of-infertile-children-says-Australian-scientist?cid=app-iPhone
