A point of view: IVF and the marketing of hope

October 28, 2013

Five million babies have been born thanks to IVF. But few people talk of the many more times the treatment doesn’t work, says Lisa Jardine, the departing chair of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. Modern medicine can achieve extraordinary feats in repairing and protecting the human body, from hip replacements to life-extending cancer treatments. But for most of us, I think, there are two areas of medical intervention that have a very special status and deserve the closest ethical attention: birth and death, the creation of life and its termination. (BBC)