Assisted reproduction means male infertility will continue for years to come

Children born through the use of assisted reproductive technologies will need to monitor their health in adult life with special care, a leading geneticist warned this week.

Carmen Sapienza, of Temple University School of Medicine, Philadelphia, was speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Diego. He said that more than three million children had now been born as a result of assisted reproductive technologies since the birth of Louise Brown, the first “test tube baby,” on 25 July 1978.

In some countries babies born as a result of such technologies represented 3-5% of births, …