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The Documentary: The Changing Face of Procreation: The New World Of Reproduction

The Changing Face of Procreation: Part One

11/09/2018 GMT

The New World Of Reproduction

The Changing Face of Procreation

BBC World Service - The Documentary, The Changing Face of Procreation, The New World Of Reproduction

IVF and sperm banks have been with us for 40 years – how has making babies changed?

IVF and sperm banks have been used to make babies for 40 years – how has the world of procreation changed so far?

Anyone with enough money, be they female, male, gay, straight, single or in a relationship now has the opportunity to try for a baby of their own. By the end of the century, an estimated 157 million people alive or 1.4 % of the world’s population will owe their lives to assisted reproductive technologies like IVF, donor eggs and sperm and surrogacy. 

So how are people around the world using these innovations? And how well is society doing in getting to grips with the ethical questions that go hand in hand with the creation of life of in these ways?

In part one, Krupa Padhy examines where we have got to after 40 years of IVF. In England, she visits a family made up of white British parents and their three boys, plus a ‘snow baby’: created during an IVF cycle for her Indian-American genetic parents, but adopted as an embryo by her birth family. She hears from ethicists and law makers from around the world about how countries have struggled to adapt to new technological realities, and discovers stories that challenge ideas of what IVF is for, like that of an Indian woman who used her dead son’s sperm to create grandchildren.

Picture: Newborn baby, credit: Getty Images

Producer: Lucy Proctor

The Documentary: The Changing Face of Procreation

Are we facing the 'end of sexual reproduction'?

Krupa Padhy investigates whether science could bring about the 'end of sexual reproduction'.

"Within 30 years Americans will stop having sex to procreate", according to the American bioethicist and barrister Henry Greely. Instead, he says stem cells from a couple's skin would be used to make eggs and sperm and then an embryo.

His comments last year caused an outcry, but he's one of a growing number of scientists and academics who are warning of revolutionary changes ahead. Many are predicting the 'end of sexual reproduction', as more and more people turn to IVF to have children.  
 
The Global Assisted Reproductive Technology Market is expected to reach $31.4 billion in the next five years, and the number of IVF babies is rocketing due to infertility issues caused by obesity, stress and an increasingly sedentary lifestyle. In The Changing Face of Procreation, Krupa Padhy meets the scientists that are at the cutting edge of reproductive medicine, and examines the alternative paths being taken to create a family, including 'snow babies', conceived from frozen embryos that in some cases are decades old.

Image:Embryo selection for IVF (Credit: Science Photo Library)

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