No more sex for procreation?

A bold study estimates that the traditional method of making babies will be a dying art, replaced by in-vitro fertilization (IVF) technology.

According to a new report, advances in IVF technology mean it will be possible to produce embryos with a success rate of virtually 100 per cent and cultivate them in computer-controlled storage facilities, reported Times of London.

The advancement will ease the pressure on couples who have delayed having children until their late 30s or 40s.

They may routinely opt for IVF rather than sex to reproduce, giving themselves a greater chance of conceiving through IVF than young adults in peak condition, who have only a one-in-four chance a month of conceiving naturally.

"Natural human reproduction is at best a fairly inefficient process." says Mr John Yovich, co-author of report.

Present fertility techniques meant that the healthiest of couples have a 50 per cent chance of success using IVF, said the report.

However, authors of the study, published in the Journal Reproductive Bio Medicine Online, said that rapid advances in artificial reproduction for farm animals - which have led to a near-100 per cent success rate in the production of cattle embryos - claim the technology could easily be adapted for humans.

Mr John Yovich, a co-author of the report, told The Times: "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."

Gedis Grudzinskas, a Harley Street infertility specialist and editor of Reproductive Bio Medicine Online, said: "It wouldn't surprise me if IVF does become significantly more efficient than natural reproduction, but I doubt whether you could ever completely guarantee it would work."

Three-person IVF may prevent inherited ills

British scientists have mastered a controversial artificial reproduction technique that could prevent incurable inherited diseases by swapping DNA between two fertilized human eggs.

Lead researcher Doug Turnbull of Newcastle University said on Wednesday he hoped the first babies free from so-called mitochondrial diseases would be born within three years.

But applying the technique in the clinic, to help women at risk of passing on the disorders, will require a change in British law that currently bans reproduction from such manipulated embryos.

Around one in 6,500 children are born with serious diseases caused by malfunctioning mitochondrial DNA, leading to a range of conditions that can include fatal heart problems, liver failure, brain disorders, blindness and muscular weakness.

The Newcastle team's technique effectively replaces mitochondria, which act as tiny energy-generating batteries inside cells, so a baby doesn't inherit faults from its mother. Mitochondria are only passed down the maternal line.

"What we've done is like changing the battery on a laptop. The energy supply now works properly, but none of the information on the hard drive has been changed," Turnbull said.

"A child born using this method would have correctly functioning mitochondria, but in every other respect would get all their genetic information from their father and mother."

Within a day of fertilization, using in vitro fertilization, nuclear DNA is removed from the embryo and implanted into a donor egg, whose own genetic material has been removed and discarded.

The resulting fetus inherits nuclear DNA, or genes, from both its parents but mitochondrial DNA from a second "mother."

For critics like Josephine Quintavalle of campaign group Comment on Reproductive Ethics that makes it "a step too far in meddling with the building blocks of human life."