IVF $1.69 AUD
Category: Medicine & Inventions
‘In Vitro Fertilisation’, also known as IVF, is concerned with enabling infertile couples to have children. As a result of IVF, thousands of couples and individuals have been able to fulfil their dream of procreating. To fully appreciate the complexities of IVF it is important to know the history of experiments in reproduction. It all began in 1866, when there were reports of a successful human birth from Artificial Insemination, or AI, in the United States. By the 1920s, AI was practised in various medical offices around Europe.The ‘in vitro’ part of IVF means ‘in a glass petri dish’ or ‘in a test tube’. So ‘in vitro fertilisation’ literally means the fertilisation of the egg by the sperm in a petri dish or test tube. In 1938, American doctors John Rock and Arthur Hertig began taking eggs from women at Brookline’s Free Hospital for Women. By the 40s, they had successfully fertilised a human egg outside the human body. This was a major step towards achieving IVF pregnancies. But for this to occur, the growth and survival of the resulting embryos were necessary.
