A reproductive specialist from Norway believes that more and more people will need artificial insemination.
The first person born as a result of IVF, Briton Louise Brown, will turn 41 this year. Since then, with the help of this method of infertility treatment, thousands of childless couples, including famous ones, have been able to become parents. But some doctors are concerned about the popularity of IVF. They believe that in the future, the use of artificial insemination can affect the course of evolution and change humanity as a whole.
Dr. Hans Heinvik, a leading fertility specialist at Telemark Hospital in Norway, is confident that more couples will rely on technology to help them conceive. And if earlier the defective genes that prevented getting pregnant died with the carrier, now they will be passed on. The doctor is confident that children born with IVF will need the same help when they decide to have children of their own. Well, the birth of millions of children conceived in a test tube will change the course of human evolution.
The fertility specialist believes that the defective genes responsible for infertility will spread further and further.
“Future generations will be genetically adapted to an environment where reproduction is increasingly dependent on technological intervention,” writes Heinwick in an accompanying note to his presentation, which the doctor intends to address at a conference of the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology.
In the end, so many changes in genetics will accumulate that the human genome itself will change. People will gradually lose the ability to naturally conceive. And all because IVF, a technological intervention, according to the doctor, violates the principle of natural selection.
Louise Brown, the first test-tube baby, gave birth herself, without any intervention and IVF
The statement by the Norwegian expert is reminiscent of the statement of one Russian official. We will remind, she said that as a result of IVF normal children are not born. Only with deviations. Then all domestic reproductologists rebelled against this illiterate statement. So my colleagues disagree with Heinwick.
“Most couples who have difficulty conceiving do not actually have any genetic defects. Rather, we are talking about problems with the reproductive system: obstruction of tubes, adhesions, absence of tubes due to operations, even a vasectomy, ”says Jill Lockwood, head of Midland Fertility Services.
Dr. Lockwood believes genetic problems are not a reason to give up parenting. After all, IVF technologies are so good because it is possible to exclude the development of hereditary diseases in a child even at the stage of fertilization.
However, Dr.Hainwick himself stressed that he is not against IVF. He simply calls for studying how IVF will affect the future of humanity in terms of evolution.