AssistedConception.org

AMERICAN scientists have made what appears to be an exciting and important step towards what could eventually become a cure for infertility. The ability to grow human eggs from ovarian stem cells in a laboratory opens up new opportunities to women who are infertile - as a result of cancer treatment, for example - to have children who are biologically their own.

IVF treatment is getting better all the time, but it is mainly of benefit to couples with sub-fertility problems. For those who are truly infertile, the current options are egg donation or adopting a child.

However, the significant advance made by researchers at Tennessee University risks being overshadowed by another potential use for their work - extending fertility beyond the menopause by up to 12 years.

Enabling women in their 60s and possibly even their 70s to have children would be highly controversial and I, for one, hope this country does not go down that road.

People already think IVF treatment is not natural and, of course, it isn’t. But it is assisted conception for medical reasons and not for social reasons, for people who want to be able to put off having children until their 50s and 60s.

There are many false dawns on the way to a significant scientific breakthrough which can help people in a meaningful way.

But I agree in most part with what Lord Robert Winston says - that this is very interesting research and very important for moving fertility treatment forward over the next ten years.

It presents opportunities for women who have a pre-existing genetic condition, childhood cancer or growth hormone problems that renders them infertile. These are the people suffering from the most severe kind of infertility where their eggs are basically useless.

With the techniques developed in Tennessee, we could potentially look at treating such women. In the case of young girls and women diagnosed with cancer, tissues from their ovaries could be taken before they have chemotherapy or radiotherapy treatment which usually renders them infertile.

The stem cells harvested in this way could then be safely stored and used to grow new eggs when the women are ready to have a family.

In cases where male fertility may be threatened, sperm can be frozen and used in later life - there was a case recently where a man whose sperm was frozen for 21 years was able to become a father.

But eggs are far more fragile. The current freezing and thawing process involved can be damaging, and many do not survive the process. Ovarian tissue would be much more robust.

The science is not yet at the stage where it would be possible to use it in this way - the eggs grown from ovarian stem cells still have to be matured and the ability to do this is probably more than ten years away. But ten years is not a long time in the field of science.

If, in ten years, it is possible to freeze the tissue and then grow viable eggs, there would be so many people - like some who come to our support group, Cradle - who would benefit.

I think it is important for everybody in the first instance to try to conceive their own biological child. That is a primary goal for most people. If that is not an option, egg donation and adoption are the alternatives, and people who go down this route often have very fulfilled lives with their children. But all of these people will have explored all the options to have their own biological child. Having said that, while our children, Abbey, three, and James, four months, are our biological children, had my husband, Gus, and I had to move into something like adoption, we would have definitely considered it. Ultimately, it is about having children in your life.

While many people take having their own children for granted, growing numbers are finding this is not the case.

Pollution in the environment is thought to be a major cause of a general decline in fertility in both women and men and the situation is likely to get worse before it gets better.

There are specific medical conditions causing infertility but there are other ones that don’t seem to have a genetic pattern and do seem to be caused by the environment. Pollutants such as oestrogen in our water systems are possibly having an effect on human fertility. An Aberdeen University study showed that the male sperm count had dropped by 29 per cent over 12 years. That is very frightening.

A medical breakthrough such as the one in Tennessee goes some way towards tackling what is, to some extent, a man-made problem.

My only concern is that it is not confused with the opportunity for women to delay the menopause. I find it very frustrating when it is talked about in this way, because people instantly start thinking about women having children in their 60s, and that’s really not what this is about.

Many women, when they go through the menopause, think they might want to have another child, but I suspect that is simply a psychological process we all have to go through. I think it would be changing family dynamics if women were able to have a child when they were 60 or older. They will be in their 70s and 80s when the child is ten and the children of these children will never know their grandparents. I just don’t think that would be a good thing for society as a whole.

The kind of treatments that we all hope will follow from this research should be available to women in their 20s, 30s and 40s who are menopausal, but the average age for the menopause is 51, and I think that’s where the cut-off point should be.

This should not be used for women who have no medical problems with their fertility and who are simply looking to prolong their ability to have a child.

And the general public should not be confused by talk of extending female fertility and turn against something that offers real hope to infertile women.